When a scam caller knows everything about you–your address, social security number, bank account–how do they know? There isn't some super powerful hacker ring with its own call center. Your data is actually stolen at one end of the internet, goes on a trip through hacker forums and dark web stashes, and reappears in a neat spreadsheet for a call center. The more you know about how your data is breached, sold, and aggregated, the better you'll be prepared for your next well-informed call from a scammer.
In 2017, consumer reporting agency Equifax was breached, and the credit records of more than 140 million consumers—more than half the adults in the United States at the time—were extracted
When Daniel Rigmaiden was caught committing tax fraud, little did we know that he would expose an infringement on Fourth Amendment rights and even cause the surveillance laws to change.
