A leading marketing firm has accidentally published the personal details of at least 340 million customers. The data is currently for sale on the black market for just $2,000.

Marquise Global Marketing, based in London, discovered the leak when one of their clients – a major US retail company – asked for a copy of their client database. An employee accidentally uploaded the entire database without realizing the size of it, The New York Times reports.

Luckily, the data didn’t contain any sensitive information. All the information – including names, email addresses, physical addresses – is now for sale on the black market, with data brokers and aggregators Vali Data and White Label Data offering the info for $2,000.

The data is currently listed on the dark web, but is available for download in a.csv file from DataBrokers.com.

Here’s how you can get your hands on this potentially lucrative data:

Accidental Publication Of 340 Million Records

Accidental publication of data is becoming a common occurrence in recent years. Companies are putting more effort into protecting their customers’ privacy, but that doesn’t mean they’re safe.

In January 2019, Google accidentally published the driver’s license numbers and registration details of 50 million users. The incident came to light when a Google engineer noticed that his own data – which he had removed from the search engine – was included in the leak. The engineer then informed the media about the data leak, which occurred because of a bug in Google Chrome.

In some cases, these leaks are being caused by malicious third parties who exploit bugs or weaknesses in the companies’ web applications. In other cases, it’s simply the result of negligent employees who have access to sensitive data and don’t realize the danger they pose by revealing it.

The fact is that data protection is a major issue, and companies must be doing a lot more to ensure that their customers’ personal information is secure. This is especially true now that so much of our personal data can be found online, where it’s more vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Why Should You Buy This Data?

If you’re an advertiser, market researcher, or just someone who wants to know more about your customers, this data is extremely valuable.

You can use the information to learn things like your customers’ ages, genders, and physical locations. You can also use the data to get a sense of your customers’ behavior and habits – such as what type of products or services they purchase the most, which products or services they consider competing brands, and so on.

This data can also be used to assist your marketing decision-making. For example, if you know that your customers tend to be over the age of 45 and mostly male, you can decide that your next campaign will be aimed at this audience. Or, if you know that your customers have a higher propensity to buy luxury brands, you can decide that your next campaign will focus on this category.

The list of organizations that have had their customer data stolen and publicly leaked in the past year is lengthy. This includes major brands like Google, Baidu, TikTok, and LinkedIn. If you’d like to learn more, the following pages are a great resource: