Neglecting to password-protect a database backup, an American organization has exposed about 1.37 billion personal account details and email addresses online, ended up in data leaking online which could be seen by anyone poking around. Even the details weren’t secured by username or password.
A data breach hunter with MacKeeper, Chris Vickery, pointed out the issue along with CSOOnline and Spamhaus, the anti-spam group and released the details of the finding.
An outfit River City Media (RCM), run by spammers Alvin Slocombe and Matt Ferris, has leaked the files, Vickery wrote in his findings.
Vickery said the outfit was sending as many as a billion emails every day. However, the outfit claimed it as a legitimate marketing operation.
Some of the documents show how cost-effective spamming could be. A single day of activity that targeted Gmail users with 18 million emails and AOL users with another 15 million is shown by one leaked text. The total take: is around $36,000.
