Hackers, Data Brokers and Data Breaches

Image made using Polotno, photo by Jefferson Santos

Introduction

As technology becomes integrated into society we find ourselves being reliant on tech and social media to participate in a digital world. This new world is filled with new business opportunities and branding opportunities all through digital websites and social media. In the United States, 2.5 million online retailers will exist in 2022. (etailinsights) The rise of an eCommerce market was only accelerated by covid19. In the year 2020-2021, the Pandemic added an extra $218.53 billion to US eCommerce sales. (Berthene, 2022) Along with the growth of eCommerce, influencers have become a normal part of participating on the web. According to earthweb.com “ data revealed that there are between 3.2 million and 37.8 million influencers in the world, who are on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok”. (Wise, 2022) The growth of online businesses and online brands shows that we are increasingly becoming more reliant on the web as consumers. However, the web has also given us the opportunity to be producers and creators of our own personal brands. Our brands are tied to our social media, interest, our goals, and our experience. As we enter a world where our digital footprint is important to stand out in an environment oversaturated with content we need to protect our data and information. In this blog, I will explain the numerous ways your data can be exposed through hackers, data brokers, and data breaches and how we as creators/consumers can stay safe in a data-driven world.

Hackers(scammers)

Last year a TikTok star was scammed/hacked and got her Instagram account breached. The hacker then tricked her followers into giving them money(CBS 8, 2021) While many of us might never reach the level of Tiktok superstardom or start an online business, we are all still potential targets. These hackers also have numerous ways to scam/hack users to access their data/accounts. One article on technotification.com lists the numerous ways hackers can access personal accounts. (Rao, 2021) Many of the tactics hackers use are simple but creative and trick users into giving up their data through fake emails and sites. According to an article on the Worth “Gen Z is rapidly becoming known as the most entrepreneurial generation ever, with 62 percent of Gen Zers indicating they have started—or intend to start—their own business …Gen Z is already finding widespread success with their entrepreneurial exploits, from apps and YouTube channels to beauty products and hand-made bow ties.”(Tejani, 2021) As Gen Z relies more on social media to create/promote their personal brands and businesses they have to become more aware of the various dangers that exist.

Solutions:

1. Be Careful when accessing links, email, websites, or even texts. Many of these hacks occur through phishing. Which is a method that tricks users into willingly inputting their data into fake websites.

2. Use a password manager. Many of us tend to use the same passwords for the same accounts as we can’t bother to remember 100s of passwords or various apps and sites. This can lead to multiple accounts being breached as hackers will use the same email/PW combo on various sites/apps. A password manager essentially keeps all your passwords in one safe place and you can unlock all your passwords through a master password. (CyberNews, 2020)

3. Optional: Use a VPN to protect your IP. Your IP is another way hackers can spy on you. Using a VPN masks the IP so your location is not visible (Kaspersky)

Data Brokers

John Oliver spoke about Data Brokers in one of his recent shows and brought to light how much we as consumers are tracked. In his video, he explains how cookies help track internet users while on a website but certain sites keep tracking user’s beyond their site. These searches are then gathered and data broker’s put us into categories. (Oliver, 2022) These categories are then given to businesses to market to users. The scariest part is that these data brokers can sell this data to anyone. In the video, John Oliver even mentions epsilon selling data to scammers. One search on Justice.gov shows the legal case. The first part of the news release states “Epsilon Data Management LLC (Epsilon), one of the largest marketing companies in the world, has entered into a settlement with the Department of Justice to resolve a criminal charge for selling millions of Americans’ information to perpetrators of elder fraud schemes.” (Justice, 2021) These data brokers can access your name, home address, and even your social security number. In a Kaspersky article, they mention the data these data brokers collect on us. (Kaspersky, 2022) What’s even worse is that these data collecting companies can be breached themselves and some of these big companies have exposed millions of people’s data through data breaches.

Solutions:

1. The only other way to protect our data is to protest for more privacy and data protection. This can only be done at a legislative level so we must collectively come together to spread the word and speak up about data brokers.

2. There is no simple solution for fixing data brokers as the industry itself is what drives so many of the technologies we use. However, we can try to mitigate some of the ways this data can be accessed. These are some of the ways to mitigate your data being accessed according to Kaspersky

Data Breaches

Data breaches occur when huge companies get hacked into and millions of people’s personal information get exposed to the public. In 2018 google exposed millions of people’s data through a bug. Originally Google had a breach when third-party developers began to access people’s data from 2015 to 2018. When Google found out they fixed the issue but never made a formal announcement about the breach. This information was later brought to light by the wall street journal in late 2018. (MacMillan, 2018) This first initial breach compromised 500,00 users’ personal information. After the news came to light google decided to shut down its google+ service in august 2019 but another data breach occurred through a November update and 52.5 million google+ users' data was exposed. The issue was fixed 6 days later and google+ services shut down in April. (Heiligenstein, 2022) Last year 700 million LinkedIn users’ data was exposed after a data leak from inside the company. While LinkedIn has said the company was not hacked millions of people’s data was still exposed. The data leaked was not login credentials or financial information. However, the leaked info was enough to expose millions of people’s addresses, phone numbers, and full names. (Morris, 2021) These data breaches and data leaks from big companies are common and every year multimillion-dollar companies get breached in some way or another. These breaches are so common that Security magazine even lists the top data breaches of 2021. (Henriquez, 2022) As internet users it’s difficult to protect ourselves from these types of breaches as we have no control over the company's security measures. Regardless, we have to keep up to date with news and take measures to mitigate some of the risks that come with these breaches.

Solutions:

1. Avoid keeping sensitive information like bank account info on sites/apps. This data can become accessible during data breaches.

2. Keep up with news about data breaches to ensure that your data has not been compromised.

3. Check to see if your data has been breached and if so change your passwords immediately. One site to check if your data has been breached is haveibeenpwned.com

Future

The future of cybercrime and cybersecurity is hard to predict as no one truly knows the extent to which technology will grow. Every day new technologies emerge and every single one of these new tech innovations is vulnerable to attacks and breaches. In a WSJ podcast about the future of cybersecurity, they mention the role of white and black hackers. White hackers are good hackers who help businesses and our nation protect their info and data by finding bugs in their systems and informing those businesses/nations before the black hackers find the bug. The black hackers are the bad guys who want to steal, sell or make money from that sensitive information. Currently, these white hackers and black hackers are constantly at war to defend and attack businesses /nations. The podcast also mentioned one innovative idea to prevent cyber attacks by adding sandboxes into technology to add layers of protection to technology but in exchange, computers will run extremely slow. While this new technology might help stop attacks this new technology has a long way to go until it can be implemented into modern tech. (Babin, 2021) In this podcast one of the investigators Ava Sasani says “Software is everywhere. In our infrastructure, our government, and our economy. And it's hackable by definition. As we've seen in recent cases, these cyber attacks don't just have huge financial and national security consequences. They can impact us personally. After the colonial pipeline hack, millions of people were impacted, standing in lines and stuck without gas. Hospitals have been hacked and had to delay surgeries and medical care. Now imagine if hackers target power companies, waterworks, and air traffic control. There is no one way to eliminate risk completely, but experts in and out of the government say that layering cybersecurity strategies will get us as close to 100% secure as possible.”(Babin, 2021) The takeaway from this podcast is that there is no one true answer to cybersecurity and the only way to stop hackers is by having multiple layers of protection. As we become more dependent on these technologies we need to protect ourselves and our data. One interesting find that I came across was a pdf file from the United Nations. This pdf focuses on scenarios for the future of cybercrime. At the end of this document, they mention remote presence and virtual reality and mention that in the future these technologies may be exposed to risks. Along with this, they mention a brain/retina implant and how younger generations might become desensitized by augmented reality and be more willing to participate in that future technology. If these future technologies become infused with humans we might enter a new age of cybercrime and cybersecurity. A world where not just our data can be exposed and breached but our minds will be vulnerable as well. (PDF)

Conclusion

The digital world is built on data and information and as future leaders, creators, and consumers of the digital world we must understand not just the benefits but the risks. While these apps are free and make our lives easier we have become the product for these companies. Everything we do is tracked and monitored in some way or form and this data can be used to market to us or target us. We trust that these companies will keep our data safe but constantly we see they fail to protect us and our data. As consumers, we also fail to protect ourselves from hackers and scammers. Behind the scenes, white hackers and black hackers are at war for our data. The future of this world will depend on the technologies we implement into society and how each side chooses to protect/attack us. As consumers of this digital world, our current role should be to protect ourselves and utilize technology to put up our barriers of protection. The war for data and information will only continue to worsen as we incorporate more tech into our society. It’s up to us to be diligent and be the protectors of our own data.

References

1. Babin, J. (2021, July 30). Outhacking the Hackers: The Future of Cybersecurity - WSJ’s The Future of Everything - WSJ Podcasts. WSJ. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/wsj-the-future-of-everything/outhacking-the-hackers-the-future-of-cybersecurity/b000536c-56db-4e4b-9ae5-9ec95f462960

2. Berthene, A. (2022, March 16). Coronavirus pandemic adds $219 billion to US ecommerce sales in 2020–2021. Digital Commerce 360. Retrieved June 14, 2022, from https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/coronavirus-impact-online-retail/

3. CBS 8 San Diego. (2021, July 22). Scammers trying to find more victims with group threads [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuIEC2haWxw&feature=youtu.be

4. CyberNews. (2020, November 13). How password managers work [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtOh1-TUabU&feature=youtu.be

5. How Many Online Retailers Are in the US? (n.d.). Etailinsights.Com. Retrieved June 14, 2022, from https://www.etailinsights.com/online-retailer-market-size#:%7E:text=In%20short%2C%20there%20are%20currently,are%20in%20the%20United%20States

6. Hope, H. (2021, November 16). Hackers steal influencer’s Instagram account and demand money. Cbs8. Retrieved June 14, 2022, from https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/consumer-alert/hackers-steal-influencers-instagram-account-and-demand-money/509-68d9d883-38b2-47eb-a4ae-088258e90938

7. Henriquez, M. (2022, March 17). The top data breaches of 2021. Security Magazine. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/96667-the-top-data-breaches-of-2021

8. HaveIbeenpwned. (n.d.). HaveIbeenpwned. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://haveibeenpwned.com/

9. Heiligenstein, M. X. (2022, March 21). Google Data Breaches: Full Timeline Through 2022. Firewall Times. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://firewalltimes.com/google-data-breach-timeline/#:%7E:text=December%202018%3A%20Google%2B%20Bug%20Exposes,from%20August%20to%20April%202019

10. Kaspersky. (2022, May 16). What is VPN? How It Works, Types of VPN. Www.Kaspersky.Com. https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/what-is-a-vpn

11. Kaspersky. (2022, May 11). How to stop data brokers from selling your personal data. Www.Kaspersky.Com. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/preemptive-safety/how-to-stop-data-brokers-from-selling-your-personal-information

12. LastWeekTonight. (2022, April 11). Data Brokers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqn3gR1WTcA

13.Marketing Company Agrees to Pay $150 Million for Facilitating Elder. (2021, July 6). Justice.Gov. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/marketing-company-agrees-pay-150-million-facilitating-elder-fraud-schemes#:%7E:text=Epsilon%20Data%20Management%20LLC%20

14. Morris, C. (2021, June 30). Massive data leak exposes 700 million LinkedIn users’ information. Fortune. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://fortune.com/2021/06/30/linkedin-data-theft-700-million-users-personal-information-cybersecurity/

15. MacMillan, D., & McMillan, R. (2018, October 8). Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public. WSJ. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-exposed-user-data-feared-repercussions-of-disclosing-to-public-1539017194

16. Rao, V. S. (2021, August 10). How Can Hackers Hack Social Media Accounts? Technotification. Retrieved June 14, 2022, from https://www.technotification.com/2018/11/hack-social-media-accounts.html

17. Tejani, S. (2021, April 16). What I’ve Learned From Working With Gen Z Entrepreneurs. Worth. Retrieved June 14, 2022, from https://www.worth.com/gen-z-entrepreneurs/#:%7E:text=Gen%20Z%20by%20the%20Numbers&text=Gen%20Z%20is%20rapidly%20becoming,to%20start%E2%80%94their%20own%20business

18. un.org. (2020). Project 2020 scenarios for the future of cybercrime. International Cyber Security Protection Alliance. https://www.un.org/disarmament/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/icspa-project-2020-scenarios-for-the-future-of-cybercrime.pdf

19. Wise, J. (2022, June 7). How Many Influencers are There in 2022? EarthWeb. Retrieved June 14, 2022, from https://earthweb.com/how-many-influencers-are-there/#:%7E:text=Influencers%20Are%20There%3F-,Our%20data%20revealed%20that%20there%20are%20between%203.2%20million%20and,Instagram%2C%20YouTube%2C%20and%20TikTok