Fifty-six percent of 270 U.S. appellate court judges may have had their personal details available on data broker sites, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
Moreover, almost 50 of the said federal judges are believed to have had their information on at least five of such websites, indicating the elevated risk of doxxing and violence against judges, according to a study by researchers from data deletion firm Incogni, who only used judges' names, ages, cities, and states to identify the exposed information. Increasing security threats against judges have since prompted New Jersey to approve legislation mandating data brokers to immediately delete law enforcement individuals' data upon request, while Vermont has been moving to advance a similar bill, which has already been passed by the state House of Representatives. Vermont legislation has been supported by consumer data privacy firm Atlas Data Privacy, which sued nearly 120 data brokers that did not adhere to New Jersey's law.
