Massive leak exposes data on 123 million US households

An article on C|Net today reported that a Massive leak exposes data on 123 million US households. An unsecured database that contained a wide range of personal details about virtually every American household, was left online by marketing analytics company Alteryx. The data set included 248 different data fields covering a wide variety of specific personal information, including address, age, gender, education, occupation and marital status. Other fields included mortgage and financial information, phone numbers and number of children in the household. The repository contained massive data sets belonging to Alteryx partner Experian, a consumer credit reporting agency that competes with Equifax. According to the article the data "would be invaluable for unscrupulous marketers, spammers and identity thieves, for whom this data would be largely reliable and, more importantly, varied."

These data breaches are becoming almost commonplace, and everyone time information about you, your family, or your household is disclosed you are put at risk of becoming a victim of identity theft, fraud, phishing, and other targeted cybercrimes. You should make it a point to limit the amount of information that you disclose about yourself, and whenever possible have your information removed from databases and other records. Individual OPSEC and Personal Security is becoming more important everyday.