Actual punitive measures taken against entities who e.g. manipulate personal data in a negligent way. [1]

Which was much harder to achieve before.

[1] https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

Right to be forgotten - you can ask companies to delete data they hold on you.

Data ownership/portability : you can ask companies for a copy of all data they hold on you or related to you.

I’ve seen the latter used by job applicants to get an entire copy of their interviews, transcripts and assessments including the reason for not being hired.

In the UK open banking was essentially a response to GDPR this has allowed (to a limited extent) a variety of tools to be built on top of bank accounts that others would not have been.

GDPR doesn't apply in the states, but hopefully it provides for some punishment for the poor security here for EU customers. Of course, then some Americans will get mad that a US company has to follow EU law.

It's a weird article. For one, the researcher says "they believe" the data belongs to IDMerit but apparently aren't sure. IDMerit denies it's the owner of the data nor is it any of their partners. And there's very few details about where or how they found this database. It's possibly some kind of hoax or ransom attempt? Or there's really just billions of unaccounted databases of private data just sitting all over the Internet.

I presume the database exists, but some of the details don't add up. IDMerit say "IDMERIT’s systems and security infrastructure have never been compromised", "there has never been a data breach or exfiltration from [our partners'] systems during, before, or after this event" and "IDMerit does not own, control or store customer data". But Cybernews says that they "promptly secured the database" after being notified. Cybernews also didn't give the reason why they thought this was to do with IDMerit (unless I missed it). I can't quite make head nor tail of it.

A record is not necessarily unique. Name changes, address changes, phone number changes, can all create "new" records in dumps like these.

The 1B number would contain multiple records per person.

For example if I (as a German in Germany, ymmv) open a bank account online that involves a call with one of these companies where they take pictures and information from my passport and check that that's me. Then I choose payment in installments on some online shop, same game. Apply for a small loan? Same game. Set up an account for trading (stock exchange or crypto)? You guessed it, another call. Another payment in installments, backed by the same bank? Apparently verifying my identity again is easier than checking their database. Each of those is another record. Potentially with a new identity document, address or even name (maybe you got married) but mostly just the same data confirmed again with another timestamp

Not all of them use the same identity verification service, but there aren't that many. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many are the same company under different brands

Makes sense if the ID verification process involves scanning a driver license or passport.

Edit- rereading this, you’re obviously talking about scale. The original article is much better : https://cybernews.com/security/global-data-leak-exposes-bill...

Or the tech executives barring their children from using social media.

The Fox article just cites CyberNews.[0]

Cybernews posts screenshots[1] featuring usernames like idmKYCCN and idmKYCFR, and the ports were locked down after contacting ID Merit.

I think thay what's happened is that everyone is telling the literal truth and speaking very carefully to use that truth to obscure rather than inform. To hell with the victims. The way I intrerpet this is that their denials are both factually accurate AND misleading.

The partner who said there is "no indication that any customer data has been compromised" is telling the literal truth. They can't find any indicators because they stink at logging and the screenshots posted on CyberNews obscure the customer info intentionally. Instead Cyber News only shows the IDM usernames in plaintext. Which was the responsible thing to do They literally cant see any indications... of customer data... because they dont have logs.

Nobody should ever trust anyone involved in this again if I'm correct in this interpretation of the available facts.

[0] https://www.foxnews.com/tech/1-billion-identity-records-expo...

[1] https://cybernews.com/security/global-data-leak-exposes-bill...