Mainly since I do not know what large companies would accept illegal information they could get from you anyway. Advertisers? I am completely lost ;(
In: Technology
Depends what kind of data.
First, if it’s user behavior profiles: how would a company know they were aquired illegally?
But more sinister viruses steal your passwords and usernames or detailed personal information and sell them to criminals wich use them to steal your money or commit crimes using your identity
malware is not usually stealing the same data facebook is. Facebook is “gathering” data to better target you with ads. Its kinda a light grey zone as far as data collection is concerned.
malware does not care about advertisers, it is going to steal your contacts, discord session, passwords, and documents. its going to use your passwords to try to login to everything as you. your bank, your email, your facebook, etc. it uses your contacts, email, and discord, etc to try to spread itself, Propoganda, or other similar things. It uses your bank to try to start sending funds to its owner. They often leave a “backdoor” so they can re-access your computer easily and do nice things like mine crypto on your computer for the attacker, or be part of a ddos attack.
If you had secret documents someone might want (you dont, think classified/protected documents, unreleased songs by major artists, etc) it will sell those to blackmarket destributers
and any personal information it can sell to spam companies to try to spearfish you, after all, if they know your name, address, birthday, and bank it is much easier to pretend to be your bank.
and they can always just encrypt all your important (to you) documents, and then sell you the decryption key
Theres two common buyers for data stolen from viruses:
1) cyber criminals – who may be interested in banking details to steal money or getting into your accounts for various reasons
2) victims – extortion is becoming a common tactic for malware, with a lot of viruses stealing your data and then threatening to publish it unless you pay
The answer you’re looking for, I think, is international cybercrime syndicates in places like Myanmar, India, Nigeria, Russia, etc. where criminal prosecution against them is unlikely.
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