When your data becomes a commodity: The loud cyber scandal of recent months

The price of a click

In March of this year, one of the largest social media platforms admitted that data from 780 million users had been shared with third parties without express consent. This incident exposed something most of us hadn't even considered: every like, every share, every second spent scrolling through content creates a profile that is then resold.

The problem is not just the scale of the leak. It lies in the systematic way our digital footprints are collected, analyzed, and used. Every website visit, every search, every GPS location is another building block in a mosaic of our lives that someone else is piecing together without our knowledge.

Three hours and all lost

Joanna, a 34-year-old entrepreneur from Warsaw, opened an email that looked like a message from her bank. Within three hours, she lost access to her company account, customer database, and five years of business correspondence. The phishing attack she fell victim to was so sophisticated that even IT specialists admitted: "Anyone could have been fooled by that."

“I thought I was careful. I check senders, don't click suspicious links. And yet, one moment of inattention was enough,” Joanna recalls.

Her story is not an isolated case. In Poland alone, the number of phishing attacks has increased by 247% compared to the previous year. But it's not the numbers themselves that should worry us. It's the fact that attackers are becoming increasingly better at impersonating trusted institutions, using information we ourselves have shared online.

Why the traditional approach no longer works

For years, we’ve been told: "Use strong passwords," "Don't click suspicious links," "Install antivirus software." All of this is still important, but it's no longer enough.

Modern threats are complex. An attack can start with a harmless-looking social media post, run through a compromised mobile application, and end with a bank account takeover. A single defense mechanism is not enough. A strategy is required.

Stories that shouldn’t have happened

Michał contacted us after receiving a message from someone claiming to have access to his webcams. Through an audit, we found that he used the same password for 23 different services – including three that had previously been affected by data breaches.

Anna, in turn, discovered that someone was using her photos to create fake profiles on dating sites. The problem wasn't a sophisticated hack – she had simply shared too much publicly.