The Russian Hackers Behind the Largest Cyber Breach Ever

A group of Russian hackers has reportedly stolen 1.2 billion usernames and passwords and 500,000 emails addresses from people around the globe. According to a report published Tuesday in The New York Times, the cyber criminals collected the confidential information from 420,000 websites for everything from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. But Alex Goldman of On the Media and its podcast TLDR tells WNYC's All Things Considered Host Amy Eddings that consumers should keep the breach in perspective. 

"If there are people working on a much smaller scale, the chances of your information being utilized if they capture it is much higher," Goldman said. "With 1.2 billion records, the chance that someone is going to try and perpetrate some kind of identity theft -- you become a needle in a very, very, very large haystack."