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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

I checked my email address and it says my data was lost by verifications.io. I've never heard of that site before and going there didn't reveal any clues.

I googled the name and found a report [1] on the breach. They lost control of records on 2 billion email addresses.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/03/10/2-billio...

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It sounds like this was email addresses only, and they're very shady about how they acquired this information in the first place.

"The real question that the researchers and Troy Hunt, founder of Have I Been Pwned?, want to know is how Verifications.io got its hands on all of this information in the first place. The Estonian-based company has refused to respond to questions from different news outlets and has taken down its entire website as of March 4, 2019. " [1]

and

"Verifications.io ensures third-parties’ email marketing campaigns are being sent out to verified accounts, and not just fake emails. " [1]

[1]: https://www.idtheftcenter.org/763-million-records-exposed-in...

The premise of the company explains how they got the information. Marketing teams at hundreds of other companies sending over their lists to the site to see if some of their emails are fake.

I had similar with a website called Apollo. Story linked below[1].

Edit: Their opt out page and main site[2]. Notably, Firefox Developer Edition warned me and linked me to the main Firefox Monitor page, so it's something that's being built into Firefox.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/apollo-breach-linkedin-salesforc...

[2] https://www.apollo.io/privacy-policy/

Interesting, thanks for linking the story. I also had the same experience with Apollo.

Its frustrating since I never signed up for their services, and I have no control over who my data is sold to... Its getting to the point where I just assume all my data is pwned, and change passwords frequently

Seems like all the cold calling useless recruiters and sales people built up extensive databases on their clients via this company and then promptly let all that data leak.

I had the same, for all three emails I checked (primary, backup and day-job) -- and I'd never heard of it before either.

From your linked article: "This company validates bulk email lists for companies wanting to remove inactive addresses from newsletter mailouts."

What if the companies 'losing' data would be court ordered to pay a reasonable sum per lost record, lets say one Dollar, to a charity.

The outcome would have been the same. They went out of business a few days after the breach was announced.

I'm in that list as well, don't remember ever signing up for it.

Same here

I wonder how I can send them my GDPR request. Any ideas?

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