They Know Everything About Us. It’s Not a Guess. It’s Stolen Databases.
I hear it all the time: “How do they know my phone number?” “How do they know I’m friends with that person?” “How do they know my email?” “How do they know my home address?” One answer fits most cases: your data has likely already ended up online, inside leaked or stolen databases.
We picture scammers as people watching us. The reality is colder. Data moves. It gets copied, sold, and matched. Many scammers do not “know” us as humans. They read rows in a database.
The biggest example was Equifax. Here in the United States, in 2017, personal data of about 147 million people was stolen: names, Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates. Enough to open accounts, request loans, and build fake identities. Those records keep circulating and get mixed with newer leaks.
It happens with everyday services too. In 2021, data linked to Facebook users, over 500 million, was exposed: phone numbers, emails, cities, connections. No passwords, but enough to run targeted scams that feel believable, including messages that mention friends by name.
The process is simple. A company collects data to run a service. A mistake, a security hole, weak controls. The database gets copied. It appears in private forums, then in marketplaces for little money. The fresher and richer the data, the higher the price.
Buyers do not hunt one person at a time. They connect email, phone, address, and social profiles across different sources. With AI it becomes faster: “find everything about this person in the files I upload.”
Try it yourself. Have I Been Pwned lets you check whether your email or phone number appears in known breaches. Many people discover they have been exposed for years, often through services they forgot they even used.
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC