A lawsuit has been filed against National Public Data, the background screening company owned by Jerico Pictures. The plaintiff is Christopher Hoffman.
The company is accused of exposing the personal data of 2.9 billion people from the company's databases due to security vulnerabilities.
The lawsuit alleges that Due to the security flaw, a hacker operating under the pseudonym “USDoD” posted the sensitive data for free on the dark web.
The leaked data was a veritable gold mine for those who misuse personal information, Because it contains full names and past and present addresses going back 30 years, as well as information about relatives who died up to two decades ago.
According to Cyber Express, the leak is one of the biggest cybersecurity incidents in recent memory.
In the lawsuit, they also shared with the court that The company was able to access a massive amount of personal data using the “scraping” technique. During the scraping process, data is collected from websites and other freely available sources on the Internet. However, this technique in itself is not illegal. In the case of national public data, both the size and the source may raise questions.
Regarding the latter in the lawsuit, the company is alleged to have built the massive database from non-public sources.
Accordingly, among those involved are: Many may never have given their consent. To collect their data.
Cover image is an illustration. Cover image source: Getty Images
