Fraudsters can profit from data using various schemes, including extortion, phishing and direct theft of money. In addition, they can use them for doxing. This is a growing phenomenon when attackers, without any blackmail, share private information. Their goal is not to earn, but to harm the victim of the attack. In some cases, doxing is an instrument of revenge, it leads to unpleasant and sometimes tragic consequences.

"According to our survey, 37% of millennials believe that they are of no interest to intruders, but analysis of the black market showed that they are mistaken. Personal data is highly valued in shadow forums, regardless of how solvent and active their owner is online. In addition, as we see from the growing number of leaks, there are more and more risks for users. That is why we recall the need to constantly increase digital literacy and pay attention to privacy, "comments Yevgeny Pitolin, managing director of Kaspersky Lab in Central Asia, the CIS and Baltic countries.

To protect your data, Kaspersky Lab recommends:

- choose unique complex passwords for all your accounts (from 12 characters with letters in different case, numbers and special characters);

- use two-factor authorization where possible;

- set the necessary privacy settings;

- regularly check whether your data has been compromised;

- pay attention to what permissions you give applications on your smartphone, for example - the flashlight application clearly does not need access to photos;

- Do not go through suspicious links in mail, social networks and instant messengers, as well as carefully check the site on which you are going to enter data (it may turn out to be phishing);

- Install a reliable security solution that not only protects against the various thieves stealing data, but also helps generate and securely store passwords.