Almost 2.9 billion records of personal information for people in the United States were leaked on a hacking forum and they probably do not even know about it.

A new lawsuit alleges that the Florida-based background check company Jerico Pictures Inc., which does business under the name National Public Data was breached by hackers earlier this year and as a result, 2.9 billion records have had confidential data breached. The worst part is that those impacted by this cyberattack may be unaware of their data being leaked as National Public Data allegedly collects data from non-public sources without consent to compile individual user profiles for people in the US and other countries.

In April, a hacker known as USDoD claimed to be selling 2.9 billion records containing the personal data of people in the US, UK, and Canada that was stolen from National Public Data. The cyberattacker attempted to sell the data for $3.5 million.

The breached data is said to contain the person's name, mailing address, and social security number, with some records including additional information, like other names associated with the person. None of this data is encrypted. Read more about this story on our LinkedIn page