“The largest personal data leakage in Brazilian history”, 03 February 2021

...On 20 January, the largest personal data leakage in Brazilian history was discovered...The massive data sets were initially spotted by PSafe, a cybersecurity start-up, on a Dark Web forum and subsequently reported by Tecnoblog, a Brazilian tech portal. The databases available – either for free or for sale – include names, unique tax identifiers, facial images, addresses, phone numbers, email, credit score, salary and more. They exposed 223 million Brazilians. If the figure sounds odd, as the Brazilian population is only around 210 million, it is because the leaked data sets also encompass the personal data of several million deceased individuals. 104 million vehicle records are also available...The enormous extension of the databases has led many observers to suspect the leak may have originated from Serasa Experian, the leading Brazilian credit-scoring bureau...Serasa denies that the leakage originated from its system. A condensed version of the datasets is offered for free on a Darknet forum. An even more pervasive database, including 14 Gigabit of almost any thinkable information about every single Brazilian individual, enterprise and vehicle is currently on sale...The Brazilian government established a new Data Protection Authority by decree only at the end of August 2020, even if the norms that mandate its creation is the only part of the LGPD which is in force since December 2018...To deal with it seriously, national data protection strategy is needed, starting from well-designed capacity building initiatives targeting the entire population...