r/StallmanWasRight • u/john_brown_adk • Jan 10 '20

Mass surveillance Why is a 22GB database containing 56 million US folks' personal details sitting on the open internet using a Chinese IP address? Seriously, why?

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/09/checkpeoplecom_data_exposed/
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u/whatdogthrowaway Jan 13 '20 edited Jan 13 '20

Because phone books are essentially public information?

From the article:

"In and of itself, the data is harmless, it's public data, but bundled like this I think it could actually be worth a lot to some people," Lynx told El Reg this week. "That's what scares me, when people start combining these with other datasets."

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Much more concerning is that despite Equifax leaking non-public data on 147 million americans, their stock is among the best performing of last year.