Most Americans have very little choice but to provide their personal information to credit bureaus. Hackers have found a way into that data supply chain, and are advertising access in group chats used by violent criminals who rob, assault, and shoot targets.
    • IlandarOP
      532·
      1 year ago

      To be clear for people who haven’t read the article: the credit bureaus themselves are not selling information directly to criminal organisations. They are selling to other companies, who in turn may provide that information to even more third parties, who then sell it to data brokers. An example given in the article of what this data journey may look like was:

      Immigration and Customs Enforcement has used similar data that flowed from utility companies to Equifax, which then was sold to data brokers.

      The tools and databases owned by these data brokers are then used by criminals to sell information to anyone.

      • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        1 year ago

        I wonder, could this problem be solved by adding some ‘junk’ data to each access request? With that junk data being a unique identifier, so the authorities can setup a sting to catch whoever is selling access

        • NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
          16·
          1 year ago

          Without legislation forcing it, why would they bother? They already have enough separation from the crimes to avoid legal repercussions, and they get to sell data with the “this will be used for profitable criminal activity” premium baked into the original sale price.

          It’s like expecting Nestle to take any steroids action (weird auto-correct) to prevent child slavery. Why are they going to stir the pot and screw up the nice thing they have going?

          • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Slight tangent, but autocorrect seems to have gotten terrible the last year or so. My theory: as more and more people are using it, the initial dataset is being diluted by more and more bad typers. Instead of improving the dataset, it’s pulling it in so many different directions that it doesn’t know which way is up anymore