It doesn't need to be anything nearly that dramatic as assassins, because economies of scale both lower the bar and make most attacks impersonal. Consider how odd it would be for someone in 2025 to say: "Computer security?I haven't done anything to personally offend a genius hacker."
Imagine this data going to a burglar, who has a digital dashboard of nearby one-person properties and when the owner is likely to be out, able to act with confidence they can leave before the victim could return.
Sure, sophisticated international hitmen won't have any interest in catching you in ambush... but that doesn't make you safe from a local rapist of opportunity.
They are. A related example is criminal gangs tageting gun owners in France after the dataleak at the sport shooting federation. This one has been well covered. There have been a few hundred targeted robberies (on old people mostly) and one or two deaths (predictably).
In Western Europe there are also foreign burglar gangs that go on sprees for a few weeks. They're well organised but don't have time to do the stalking. They use publicly available data as much as they can.
do you have any evidence to back your claim? gangs employing teams of underage burglars assisted by risk averse adults with skills for entry and targeting are a thing. everyone has a mobile phone.
> Most of us aren't being pursued by stalkers or assassins.
Most of us, but for those that are...
However, in the world we live in today, the various LEOs are using this type of data to find people they do not like. It's getting to the point that I pine for the days of good ol' 1985 where you could just be another anonymous person in public with no tracking of your every move.
Imagine this data going to a burglar, who has a digital dashboard of nearby one-person properties and when the owner is likely to be out, able to act with confidence they can leave before the victim could return.
Sure, sophisticated international hitmen won't have any interest in catching you in ambush... but that doesn't make you safe from a local rapist of opportunity.