Privacy

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Legality of OSINT and Data Aggregators Hoarding Leaked Data? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by brownmustardminion@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I was listening to a Bazzell podcast where he mentions his company self hosting and maintaining a database of personal data and credentials for use in OSINT investigations. Some acquired through public sources but others acquired through leaks. Then of course there are data aggregate companies that do the same but are going on to sell this data for a profit.

What is the legality of this? Obviously acquiring publicly available data is legal, but how are these companies able to hold on to leaked usernames, passwords, and other confidential personal information. Especially those that were initially acquired through illegal means?

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[–] SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

It would potentially fall under "fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine" that would make it inadmissable for actual court cases but otherwise there's nothing to stop people from gathering information that is available to the public

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And this is why it is important to poison the PII databases.

I feel like someone needs to set up a project with scrambled PII mixed with totally fictitious PII and then “leak” it in chunks such that overall confidence in these databases approaches zero over time.

[–] Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Would be basically impossible. Most of what is leaked these days is just rebundled from other leaks. For example if you listened to MB on this its only a small % of data from new leaks that actually ends being new info.

Any attempt of doing something like this would prove to be trash data pretty quickly and would not have a major effect.