Every day, innocent people go to websites and input sensitive data daily which is collected by criminals who pretend to represent something they are not. Every year the number of exploits, offering “free” gift cards or claiming to be authorities like the Internal Revenue Service, steal money from naive youth up to confused seniors.
There are too many stories to count about data being used to create a criminal opportunity. Criminals are even extorting men that might be cheating on a spouse and successfully extorting them. They play the angle. You see, there are statistics that says a certain percent of men in society are cheating. So, mass emails are sent to thousands of men telling them to pay or be exposed. The response rate is very high.
Millions of dollars are forwarded to a criminal enterprise by the terrorized victim to assure the information about their infidelity never gets out. All of this starts with data that is stolen in data breaches identifying men who are married and living in a certain area. However, it is the specific information about the target, like the name of their wife, which gets the potential victim’s attention.
