Extreme data breach may affect over 2 billion people

[Redaktion]

In August of 2024, one of the largest data breaches in history took place, exposing roughly 2.7 billion personal records. The set reportedly contains data on citizens of the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Extreme-data-breach-may-affect-over-2-billion-people.875770.0.html

[Hotz]

affect over 2 billion people

affects people in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.

Ok, let's  do some maths and count the population:

UK: 67 million
USA: 334 million
CANADA: 40 million

67+334+40 = 441 million

So...... where does the "over 2 billion" come from?

[Worgarthe]

affect over 2 billion people

affects people in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.

Ok, let's  do some maths and count the population:

UK: 67 million
USA: 334 million
CANADA: 40 million

67+334+40 = 441 million

So...... where does the "over 2 billion" come from?

Check the vid by Mental Outlaw from two days ago, he downloaded the file (which is 277 GB uncompressed, not "well over 250 terabytes") and analysed:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bkpfUKP7T-Y

Tl; dw - there is a lot of multiple data inside, like one person has multiple ownerships of something and that person is being counted as, say, 20 different people or so. Now apply that to almost everyone in the database and you get the point.

[Feedback]

The file posted by Fenice supposedly weighs in at well over 250 terabytes, and is in a common format that can be opened in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets

From this sentence we can tell that the person(s) writing this article has/have no idea what he/she/they is/are talking about...

One mistake could be corrected by reviewing the article before submission: 250TB is nonsense. Looking at the screenshot we can tell it is not TB but GB here.

Secondly, google sheet cannot accept such large file, please search such information before writing articles, a google search quickly gives the answer here: https: //support.google.com/drive/answer/37603?hl=en.
Native Excel cannot open such file either as it is limited to ~1 million rows.

I have been reading NotebookCheck for years and come accross this sort of misinformation more often in the past year.
I'd prefer quality over quantity, maybe something NotebookCheck editors/moderators should care about or I will read my news somewhere else.

[Hotz]

Tl; dw - there is a lot of multiple data inside, like one person has multiple ownerships of something and that person is being counted as, say, 20 different people or so. Now apply that to almost everyone in the database and you get the point.

I get it, but then the headline ["over 2 billion people affected"] is simply overblown and factually wrong. Typical sensational media.

[Worgarthe]

I get it, but then the headline ["over 2 billion people affected"] is simply overblown and factually wrong. Typical sensational media.

Well yeah I agree with that, but sadly we live in a clickbait "culture", so it is what it is 😐

[Sergey]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys! Let me edit this a little.

[GeorgeS]

It may (or not!) be well known that there are at least 1/2 dozen "data miner" companies that collect data from public facing government websites (and other sources).

With (and without) some AI tossed in they can sort and combine the collected information to be sold as "mailing" or "contact" lists targeted for many 'life events' or 'markets'.

- Land/home ownership: recently added/removed lean, changed hands or # years of ownership
- Age threshold: 18/21/30/40/50/60/65
- Personal status: marrage, divorce, widow, birth, death
- Financial status: added/removed credit, backrupt

So in all at the end of the day the 'data' (often very outdated) that many of these companies have been using was 'leaked'.

And this is cause for alarm because?