Cybercriminals can accomplish a lot of trickery with just a little information. In fact, with just your name and a few bucks, someone could steal your government benefits. Tap or click here to see how scammers could file for unemployment in your name. On Sunday, a hacker shared 24 million records from Vimeo Livestream. A huge database of private information is available on the Dark Web. It has everything a scammer would need to hit you with a tricky phishing attack.
Here’s the backstory
A few years ago, Vimeo purchased Livestream to launch Vimeo Live. Now, the streaming service is making headlines for an enormous data scrape. To put the enormity into context: There are 21 million people living in Florida. Twenty-four million people just lost their privacy, meaning more folks are part of this scrape than there are in all of Florida. According to Cool Tech Zone, the data leaker is sharing people’s full usernames, email addresses, social networks, time zones and more. That’s more than enough information for scammers to launch a sophisticated phishing attack. These specific scams are geared to manipulate your mind, so you give away confidential information and, of course, money. Tap or click here to avoid falling for phishing scams.
Data breaches vs. Data scrapes
It’s also important to note that this is not a data breach, which is when cybercriminals break into company websites. An organizational oversight usually causes data leaks. Weak security protocols could leave sensitive data exposed for all the world to see. And when a savvy Darknet user finds those vulnerabilities, they can compile that user data into an extensive database like this. It’s free for all the world to see, which is terrible news. Ultimately, anything that compiles all this data together makes it easier for people to get their hands on it. The information exposed in this leak could help cybercriminals craft a more comprehensive profile on you. That will help them socially engineer phishing attacks that are nearly impossible to recognize. Most phishing scams target you through email. That’s why you should familiarize yourself with warning signs — and stop making this critical mistake. Tap or click here to protect your inbox from hackers.
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