{"id":217976,"date":"2026-02-27T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/27\/data-broker-breaches-fueled-nearly-21-billion-in-identity-theft-losses\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T05:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T10:05:08","slug":"data-broker-breaches-fueled-nearly-21-billion-in-identity-theft-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/27\/data-broker-breaches-fueled-nearly-21-billion-in-identity-theft-losses\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Broker Breaches Fueled Nearly $21 Billion in Identity-Theft Losses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/data-broker-breaches-fueled-dollar209-billion-in-identity-theft-losses\/\">Data Broker Breaches Fueled Nearly $21 Billion in Identity-Theft Losses<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/data-broker-breaches-fueled-dollar209-billion-in-identity-theft-losses\/\">https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/data-broker-breaches-fueled-dollar209-billion-in-identity-theft-losses\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-27 05:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.wired.com\">www.wired.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">Congressional Democrats on<\/span> the Joint Economic Committee say they\u2019ve identified more than $20.9 billion in consumer losses tied to identity theft connected to four major breaches involving data broker firms. The estimate was released Friday in a minority report stemming from a months-long inquiry into data broker practices launched by United States senator Maggie Hassan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat and the JEC\u2019s ranking member, sent investigative requests to five major data brokers\u2014Comscore, Findem, IQVIA Digital, Telesign, and 6Sense Insights\u2014in August after an investigation by The Markup and CalMatters, copublished by WIRED, found some data brokers were hiding opt-out tools from Google and other search engines using \u201cno index\u201d instructions that tell web crawlers not to list the page.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Scammers are shown to use the kind of sensitive data that companies like these hold\u2014including identifiers like dates of birth, addresses, and even Social Security numbers\u2014to target victims with personalized fraud.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Four of the companies took steps after Hassan\u2019s outreach to improve access to opt-out options, including by removing the \u201cno index\u201d code, adding more prominent links, and posting guidance on exercising privacy rights.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Findem, however, did not respond to Hassan or to committee staff follow-up, and staff said the company has not removed the \u201cno index\u201d code from its page. WIRED\u2019s calls to Findem on Thursday went unanswered.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The report says Findem\u2019s \u201cfailure to respond\u201d to the lawmakers\u2019 inquiries raises \u201cserious, broad questions about its responsiveness to opt-out requests and commitment to data privacy,\u201d adding that its own mandatory disclosures from 2024 show the company \u201cdid not process 80 percent of privacy requests from consumers and other parties,\u201d citing \u201cinsufficient data.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">IQVIA, 6sense, and Comscore did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Telesign routes press inquiries through an online form that requires&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/data-broker-breaches-fueled-dollar209-billion-in-identity-theft-losses\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Data Broker Breaches Fueled Nearly $21 Billion in Identity-Theft Losses https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/data-broker-breaches-fueled-dollar209-billion-in-identity-theft-losses\/ Publish Date: 2026-02-27 05:00:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":217977,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/699f3b7fc95722828c3f077b\/191:100\/w_1280,c_limit\/Data-Brokers-Stop-Hiding-Opt-Out-Pages-From-Google-After-US-Senators-Probe-Security-2245425437.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217976"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217978,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217976\/revisions\/217978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}