![]() ![]() "The likelihood of financial fraud is not that great, but the possibility of impersonation or profiling is certainly there," Rotenberg says. While the lack of financial information or Social Security numbers means the database isn't a straightforward tool for identity theft, the depth of personal info nonetheless could help scammers with other forms of social engineering, says Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. "I don’t know where the data is coming from, but it’s one of the most comprehensive collections I’ve ever seen." "I don’t know where the data is coming from, but it’s one of the most comprehensive collections I’ve ever seen," he says. And when WIRED asked him to find records for a list of 10 specific people in the database, he very quickly found six of them. Troia notes that almost every person he's searched for in the database, he's found. ![]() "It seems like this is a database with pretty much every US citizen in it," says Troia, who is the founder of his own New York-based security company, Night Lion Security. The categories range from interests and habits to the number, age, and gender of the person's children. While the precise number of individuals included in the data isn't clear-and the leak doesn't seem to contain credit card information or Social Security numbers-it does go into minute detail for each individual listed, including phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses, and other highly personal characteristics for every name. The haul comprises close to 2 terabytes of data that appears to include personal information on hundreds of millions of American adults, as well as millions of businesses. And now there's also a good chance that whatever information the company has about you, it recently leaked onto the public internet, available to any hacker who simply knew where to look.Įarlier this month, security researcher Vinny Troia discovered that Exactis, a data broker based in Palm Coast, Florida, had exposed a database that contained close to 340 million individual records on a publicly accessible server. A VantageScore is one of many types of credit scores.You've probably never heard of the marketing and data aggregation firm Exactis. ![]() You can see your VantageScore credit score, based on Equifax data, for free here. Credit scores are generally calculated using information from from one or more of a person's credit reports from the three nationwide credit reporting agencies, Equifax ®, Experian ®, and TransUnion ®. People with very low credit scores may be referred to as subprime borrowers, and lending institutions may charge higher interest rates in consideration of the increased risk of lending money to these borrowers. Credit scores can also be used as one factor in determining loan and credit terms, such as interest rates. Lenders, creditors and others often use credit scores to help them determine the likelihood that someone will pay back what they owe on transactions such as loans, credit cards, mortgages, utilities, and even apartment rentals. Credit scores are usually calculated by taking the following into account: Payment history, credit utilization (or the percentage of your credit limits you’re using), length of credit history and mix of credit accounts, amounts you owe, recent credit behavior, and available credit. A credit score generally ranges from 300-850, and the higher your number, the better you look to a lender because it signals that you’re more likely to repay your debt on time. Credit scores are based on your credit history and can play a significant role in the type of loan and loan terms, such as interest rate, a lender may offer you. ![]()
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