Your private information is probably being sold on the dark web

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Your private information is probably being sold on the dark web. How can criminals use it?​

Late last year, a well-known ride share app and a gaming company were hacked using well-crafted social engineering attacks. Many organizations think they’re safe from attacks by employing top-of-the-line security practices, tools and systems. Those will help deter many types of attacks, but social engineering is a stealthy method savvy threat actors can use to circumvent those measures.

And they obviously do it successfully.

securityintelligence.com

Your private information is probably being sold on the dark web. How can criminals use it? - Security Intelligence

Your credentials are likely being sold on the dark web. Learn how criminals use this to conduct highly-targeted attacks. Listen now on Into the Breach.
securityintelligence.com securityintelligence.com
 
Number Six: What do you want?
Number Two: Information.
Number Six: Whose side are you on?
Number Two: That would be telling. We want information… information… information.
Number Six: You won't get it.
Number Two: By hook or by crook, we will.
 
It's already happened, and long ago. I was a victim of Identity Theft, and my IDs were used to buy cellular phones in Florida. Back before they became a commodity...it was a regional company (remember THOSE?) and several thousands of dollars run up in unpaid bills.

Since then I've had my credit on lockdown. I've never put any of my ID on a smartphone. I never bought anything on a smartphone or using a public-access computer.

And I use a separate browser when handling ID functions or money. Never for anything else...so, with the browser not running, there's little way thieves can go in and steal.

That, and that I use Linux...
 
For as little as $0.12 per record, data brokers in the US are selling sensitive private data about active-duty military members and veterans, including their names, home addresses, geolocation, net worth, and religion, and information about their children and health conditions.

In a unsettling study published on Monday, researchers from Duke University approached 12 data brokers in the US and asked what would be necessary to buy this kind of information; they ultimately purchased thousands of records about American service members, finding that many brokers offered to sell the data with minimal vetting and were willing to deal with buyers using email domains based in both the US and Asia.

www.technologyreview.com

It’s shockingly easy to buy sensitive data about US military personnel

A new report exposes the privacy and national security concerns created by data brokers. US senators tell MIT Technology Review the industry needs to be regulated.
www.technologyreview.com www.technologyreview.com
 
Casey Jones said:
It's already happened, and long ago. I was a victim of Identity Theft, and my IDs were used to buy cellular phones in Florida. Back before they became a commodity...it was a regional company (remember THOSE?) and several thousands of dollars run up in unpaid bills.

Since then I've had my credit on lockdown. I've never put any of my ID on a smartphone. I never bought anything on a smartphone or using a public-access computer.

And I use a separate browser when handling ID functions or money. Never for anything else...so, with the browser not running, there's little way thieves can go in and steal.

That, and that I use Linux...
Click to expand...
Exact same thing happened to me. My credit is still locked down and have no banking apps on my phone.
 

US and Europe try to tame surveillance capitalism​

The US Federal Trade Commission on Monday warned that data brokers need to rethink how they define sensitive data in light of recent enforcement actions involving antivirus vendor Avast, and location data providers X-Mode and InMarket. Europe too is moving in this area and crackdowns move around the world.

The US trade watchdog has decided that browsing and location data should be considered sensitive, and that – despite the absence of allegations about personally identifiable information (PII) within the datasets of the above businesses – what makes this stuff sensitive is what can be inferred from it.

"Years of research shows that datasets often contain sensitive and personally identifiable information even when they do not contain any traditional standalone elements of PII, and re-identification gets easier every day – especially for datasets with the precision of those at issue in the FTC's proposed complaints against Avast, X-Mode, and InMarket," the commission declared.

Two weeks ago, the agency resolved its complaint against security vendor Avast for $16.5 million based on allegations that the firm used a "a unique and persistent device identifier" with its Jumpshot analytics business to track internet users' activities – including "each webpage visited, precise timestamp, the type of device and browser, and the city, state, and country."

Despite the crackdown, data brokers continue to sell advertising data that threatens people's privacy.

More:

www.theregister.com

US and Europe try to tame surveillance capitalism

Trade watchdog argues that browsing and location data are sensitive and deserve to be defended
www.theregister.com www.theregister.com
 

Here's How the CIA Plans To Use Your Ad Tracking Data​

For years, the U.S. government has bought information on private citizens from commercial data brokers. Now, for the first time ever, American spymasters are admitting that this data is sensitive—but they're leaving it up to the spy agencies on how to use it.

Last week, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines released a "Policy Framework for Commercially Available Information." Her office oversees 18 agencies in the "intelligence community," including the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA), and all military intelligence branches.

In the 2018 case Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that police need a warrant to obtain mobile phone location data from phone companies. (During the case, the Reason Foundation filed an amicus brief against warrantless snooping.) As a workaround, the feds instead started buying data from third-party brokers.

More:

reason.com

Here's how the CIA plans to use your ad tracking data

The intelligence community is admitting that info from data brokers is sensitive but isn’t accepting hard limits on how to use it.
reason.com reason.com
 
The internet is rapidly becoming worthless.

All it is is conduit for government-permitted propaganda/speech.
 
Bottom Feeder said:
they don't give a shit about your information until YOU bring yourself to their attention
Click to expand...
Of course.

Even then, they leave it to computer algos. Right up until they request a printout of an Inconvenient subject.

But I'm getting really hacked-off on the subject. It's getting harder and harder to get objective, non-political and non-commercially-solicited, information on people, products or even books.

Two things in the last two weeks. I bought a well-used van. I wanted to find out the history of it...the maker had completely changed its design twice in thirty years, so I asked Brave AI, "Is a 2009 model a good used car to buy?" And I got a reassuring stream of why it was one of the most-desirable models.

So I thought I'd play a game. I plugged in some other cars' model-names...and every damn one of them, except a Fiat 500 (the only one that came with a caution) was good to buy. That included a Chevrolet Spark, which, you may know, was designed and made by the former Daewoo Korea carmaker, that GM bought out of bankruptcy 20 years ago. Their cars, as Daewoos, were crap, and as Chevrolets, were no better.

So. There's also a book I wanted to see. Not buy; but see. Railroad history - a famous writer who's been dead for 60 years. My father had a couple of his books, and as a kid, I came across a chapter that recalled hobo-camp songs in the Great Depression. One in particular haunted me to this day...goes like this

Home in Alabama
Home in Tennessee.
Home in West Virginia...
Home I'll never be.

Home in Old Chicago
Home there in Boise
Home in San Francisco...
Ain't no home for me.

Anyway, I wanted the whole ditty and source. I have never found it, anywhere, since...but Blue Oyster Cult included much of it in their "Burnin' for You" piece.

Anyway. With this author dead, the books not in print...the nearest library that has it, is Portland...and I'm not even sure it's in the title I remember...I was hoping that I could find a PDF of the book.

NO. Even Gurgle Books has stopped giving previews (a preview would give me the table of contents at least) before I make a trip, or BUY!! (ALWAYS, BUY, goddammit!) the crappy book, which would be cheaper than the drive to Portland but a waste of the book, and maybe even I'm mistaken.

No, I CAN! NOT! FIND this information, unless I FORK OVER MONEY FIRST, and THEN find out THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW!

Grrrrr...I just wanna SMASH something...
 
Last edited:
Bottom Feeder said:
they don't give a shit about your information until YOU bring yourself to their attention
Click to expand...
The problem is that no one really knows where that line is. Which is what they want, as it causes most to self censor.


This data collection/selling shit needs to be made illegal.
 
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