PII covers information that identifies people, making its collection, storage, and disclosure central to privacy protection and breach response.
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Background for this topic.
PII (personally identifiable information) is information that identifies a person directly or can do so when combined with other data. Direct identifiers include names, government identification numbers, passport details, and email addresses; indirect identifiers can include birth dates, precise location, or unique account attributes. The term is used broadly in security, but its legal scope varies: laws and regulations may use different definitions, such as “personal data” under the GDPR or protected health information under HIPAA.
PII is a high-value target because unauthorized access or disclosure can enable identity fraud, targeted phishing, or privacy harm. It may be exposed through compromised applications, cloud storage, logs, endpoints, or third parties. Practitioners should inventory and classify it, collect and retain only what is needed, restrict access, and protect it with encryption or tokenization where appropriate. Monitoring and tested procedures for investigating exposure are important, while retention, deletion, and notification duties depend on the applicable jurisdiction and sector.
Weekly headline count for the current query.
It’s possible to leak PII describing 5.7 million people without breaching privacy rules
Even limited voter rolls can be linked to identify people, research shows
Even limited voter rolls can be linked to identify people, research shows Your voter data could be used against you. A foreign intelligence service that wished to identify the family members of deployed military personnel could do so by cross-referencing public voter record data and social media posts.…
Names, phone numbers, physical addresses also included in Shiny Hunters alleged data dump
Names, phone numbers, physical addresses also included in Shiny Hunters alleged data dump Updated Logistics technology company Pitney Bowes, which makes franking machines for US postage, is the latest scalp claimed by ShinyHunters and its ongoing spree of pay-or-leak attacks against major organizations.…
Crooks used simple phone scam to compromise vendor account, spilling personal and financial data belonging to more than 15,000 people A voice-phishing scam targeting one of Ericsson's service providers has exposed the personal data of more than 15,000 individuals after attackers sweet-talked an employee into handing over access.…
AI conversations for sale include sensitive health and legal details Your latest chat transcript could be bought and sold. Data brokers are selling access to sensitive personal data captured during chatbot conversations, despite claims that the data is anonymized and obtained with consent.…
Crooks claim they helped themselves to over 37M accounts during January hit on subcontractor French online marketplace ManoMano is warning customers their personal data was siphoned off after a cyberattack hit one of its customer support subcontractors – and criminals are already claiming the haul is far larger than the company's carefully worded notice suggests.…
About 100 customers affected PayPal has notified about 100 customers that their personal information was exposed online during a code change gone awry, and in a few of these cases, people saw unauthorized transactions on their accounts.…
Are you a good bot or a bad bot? More than 30 malicious Chrome extensions installed by at least 260,000 users purport to be helpful AI assistants, but they steal users' API keys, email messages, and other personal data. Even worse: many of these are still available on the Chrome Web Store as of this writing.…
HR outsourcer Conduent confirms intruders accessed benefits-related records tied to US personnel Nearly 17,000 Volvo employees had their personal data exposed after cybercriminals breached Conduent, an outsourcing giant that handles workforce benefits and back-office services.…
Skills marketplace is full of stuff - like API keys and credit card numbers - that crims will find tasty Another day, another vulnerability (or two, or 200) in the security nightmare that is OpenClaw.…
Contact details were accessed in an intrusion that went undetected for months, the blogging outfit says Newsletter platform Substack has admitted that an intruder swiped user contact details months before the company noticed, forcing it to warn writers and readers that their email addresses and other account metadata were accessed without permission.…
Regulators logged over 400 personal data breach notifications a day for first time since law came into force GDPR fines pushed past the £1 billion (€1.2 billion) mark in 2025 as Europe's regulators were deluged with more than 400 data breach notifications a day, according to a new survey that suggests the post-plateau era of enforcement has well and truly arrived.…
Maine filing confirms July attack affected 42,521 employees and job applicants Ingram Micro disclosed that a July 2025 ransomware attack compromised the personal data of tens of thousands of employees.…
Endesa says payment info stolen after alleged crook boasted of 1 TB-plus haul Spanish energy giant Endesa is warning customers about a data breach after a cybercrim claimed to have walked off with a vast cache of personal information allegedly tied to more than 20 million people.…
PLUS: Veeam patches critical vuln; Crims bribing dark web insiders; UK school takedown; And more infosec in brief Meta has fixed a flaw in its Instagram service that allowed third parties to generate password reset emails, but denied the problem led to theft of users’ personal information.…
Happy Groundhog Day! Security researchers at Radware say they've identified several vulnerabilities in OpenAI's ChatGPT service that allow the exfiltration of personal information.…
Automaker's third security snafu in three years Thousands of Nissan customers are learning that some of their personal data was leaked after unauthorized access to a Red Hat-managed server, according to the Japanese automaker.…
PLUS: Texas sues alleged TV spies; The Cloud is full of holes; Hospital leaked its own data; And more Infosec In Brief Google will soon end its “Dark Web Report”, an email service that alerts users when their personal information appears on the internet’s dark underbelly.…