Massive leak exposes data on 123 million US households

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Massive leak exposes data on 123 million US households

December 20th, 2017

Awake Goy

A massive database containing information on more than 123 million American households was discovered unsecured on the internet earlier this year, researchers said Tuesday.

The cloud-based data repository was left online by marketing analytics company Alteryx, exposing a wide range of personal details about virtually every American household, according to security researchers with the UpGuard Cyber Risk Team. The leak exposed consumers to a variety of nefarious activity, from spamming to identity theft, the researchers warned.

Though no names were exposed, 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.

“From home addresses and contact information, to mortgage ownership and financial histories, to very specific analysis of purchasing behavior, the exposed data constitutes a remarkably invasive glimpse into the lives of American consumers,” UpGuard researchers Chris Vickery and Dan O’Sullivan wrote in their analysis.