A recent Exactis data leak reveals personal information for hundreds of millions of people.
Starting off, we should probably talk about what exactly Exactis is. The company is a marketing firm that collects a wide variety of data on people. The company claims that it has records on 230 million people and 110 million businesses for a total of 340 million records.
The information that Exactis collects is mostly personal. This includes names, addresses and other basic information. However, it also collects very specific details about a person’s private life. This can include religion, hobbies and certain preferences.
The type of information that Exactis doesn’t collect is payment information. This means that people don’t have to worry about their credit card or debit card information being included in the Exactis data leak. It also doesn’t have Social Security Numbers, either.
The Exactis data leak was possible because of how the company was storing its information. This info was left up on a public server with no protection around it. While there’s no evidence to suggest that hackers may haven taken this information, it is a possibility, reports Wired.
“Today’s cookies can link your mobile phone to your laptop, to your home monitoring devices, and much, much more. Creepy? Scary? Orwellian? Yes, yes, yes,” Mark Weinstein, the privacy expert and founder of social media company MeWe, told MarketWatch. “So imagine that Exactis, like Facebook, knows everything about you — really.”
The Exactis data leak is one thing, but there are other companies dealing with plain data breaches. A recent example of this is Adidas. You can learn more about its data woes by following this link.
As of this writing, William White did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
