https://mashable.com/article/background-check-company-breached-3-billion-affected
A recent class action lawsuit alleges that background check company Jerico Pictures, operating under the name National Public Data, suffered a data breach earlier this year exposing the confidential information of nearly 3 billion people. The lawsuit claims the data was stolen by a hacker group known as USDoD.
The exposed information reportedly includes full names, past and present addresses, Social Security numbers, and personal details of family members. The lawsuit further alleges that National Public Data gathers this data by scraping information from non-public sources without individuals’ knowledge or consent.
The breach remained unknown to the public until a plaintiff, Christopher Hofmann, was alerted by an identity theft protection service in July that his information had been compromised and leaked on the dark web. The hacker group reportedly posted a database containing the stolen information on a dark web forum in April and sought $3.5 million from a potential buyer.
This data breach appears to be one of the largest ever recorded, rivaling Yahoo’s 2013 breach that affected 3 billion accounts.