Personal data on active-duty personnel sell for $0.12 cents per service member
A team of academic researchers were able to obtain data on active-duty personnel. This data was presented on a data card that contained sensitive information about the service member. Data cards are used by marketers and others to analyze customers and prospective customers so that they could better craft their sales campaigns. If a team at a university could obtain this data, then it is possible that foreign agents could also obtain this information.
From CNN politics:
The researchers could shop for data on servicemembers based on geolocation, including whether they lived or work near Fort Bragg, Quantico or other sensitive military locations. In some cases, they were able to buy the data for as cheap as $0.12 per record.
The study points to longstanding national security concerns from US officials and outside experts that a foreign intelligence service, for example, could build a picture of the whereabouts and vulnerabilities of US military members simply by shopping for the information online. Scammers could also use the data to stalk or blackmail military families, the researchers concluded.
The researchers were taking advantage of a vast data-broker ecosystem in the US that spans everything from major credit reporting agencies to obscure analytics firms to mobile apps that quietly sell users’ location data. There are still few legal restrictions in the US on buying and selling such data.
“It was way too easy to obtain this data: a simple domain, 12 cents a service member, and no background checks on our purchases,” said Justin Sherman, a senior fellow at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy who runs its data brokerage research project.
“If our research team, subject to university research ethics and privacy processes, could do this in an academic study, a foreign adversary could get data in a heartbeat to profile, blackmail, or target military personnel,” Sherman told CNN.
Data brokers purchase people’s personal information, including Social Security numbers, names, addresses, income, employment history, criminal background and other items, which can then be used to conduct legitimate information surveys, such as background checks and credit checks.
CNN Politics has more on the story.
Category: Military issues
Always thought that military lives were cheap.
Yep…we just didn’t know HOW cheap! Anybody that wants to know about anyone already has everything about them down to condom and bra size.
Full disclosure…of some info not known til now, but will be entered into a data base by the trackers that be…Since no ham sammiches were presented for indictment and The Gun Bunny was awfully hongry, he went to his local cafe after the Grand Jury finished our business and were released. Got hisself a to go plate of Southern Fried Chest of Yard Bird, skillet roasted taters with sauteed ony-yums, heaping serving of (not so) Great Yanky Beans (no ham hock in ’em ergo the not so), pan fried Johnny Cake, and a mason jar full of The House Wine…Sweet Iced Tea. I reckon the main difference between Great Yanky Beans and (BEAT) Navy Beans is the GYB can be great (with a ham hock floating in them) whereas the (BEAT) Navy Beans just float along and cause poots (or in the case of the 2nd Saturday in December…punts).
Damn … and I think I’m a funny writer.
‘Tis good stuff there, King!
Aww…(kicks rocks) Shucks… Thank ye, CW, High Praise, indeed, coming from you. Try the waitress and here’s a tip on the veal (tender as a baby’s bottom).
My 26 leaden soldiers are among the walking wounded.
And the US Government was hacked a few years ago and anyone with a clearance with all data behind it was stolen.
China is thankful.
And no one paid for that screw up.
Welp, if the foreign powers were not already aware of that issue, they damn well are now. Of course I’m sure they did know prior to the University publishing their study.