When Anon stuck their finger in the eye of many a Texan cop with their huge 3GB data dump, we were more interesting in the bigoted juicy stuff. Turns out, it was also an identity thief’s wet dream.
Security firm Identity Finder ran a detailed analysis of the leaked goods, and came up with some astonishing stats — within the cache was enough to steal a hell of a lot of money:
•647 Social Security Numbers, of which 418 were unique;
•42 Credit Card and Bank Account Numbers, of which 26 were unique;
•174 Passwords;
•83 Driver licence Numbers;
•6182 Dates of Birth;
•78,869 Phone Numbers, of which 14,701 were unique;
•10,175 Personal Postal Addresses, of which 4631 were unique; and
•325,596 email addresses, of which 39,419 were unique.
Put this together and you have everything you need to take out a fake credit card in some deputy’s name, as well as locational information that would help with something more nefarious. It’s easy to dismiss these leaks as the equivalent of a bunch of kids running away with armfuls of Halloween candy, but we shouldn’t forget the kind of highly sensitive stuff that can be extracted with ease. All those cops in Texas sure aren’t going to forget.