The consumer data broker Radaris.com has long had a reputation for ignoring requests to remove personal information from its vast empire of people-search services online. That reputation caught up with the company recently in a lawsuit alleging Radaris violated a New Jersey privacy law that provides for hefty fines against data brokers that publish personal information on state law enforcement officials. In the face of repeated stonewalling and prevarication by attorneys for Radaris, the judge in the case ordered that radaris.com and more than a dozen other data broker domains be transferred to the plaintiffs.

In February 2024, Radaris was sued by Atlas Data Privacy Corp, a company that has been pursuing data brokers alleged to be violating a New Jersey statute called Daniel’s Law. The statute allows state law enforcement officials, government personnel, judges and their families to have their information completely removed from commercial data brokers and people-search services, and provides for fines of $1,000 per violation against companies that ignore removal requests.

Less than a month after Atlas sued Radaris, KrebsOnSecurity published a deep dive into the Radaris co-founders — Igor and Dmitry Lubarsky (also spelled Lybarsky) — Russian-born brothers living in Massachusetts who operate a dizzying array of people-search companies as well as a number of Russian language dating services and affiliate programs.

Attorneys for the Lubarsky brothers threatened to sue for defamation if the story wasn’t removed and an apology issued. Their attorney asserted that our reporting was wildly inaccurate, and that the true owners of the company were Ukrainians living in Ukraine.

KrebsOnSecurity doubled down and showed how the Lubarsky brothers built and operated Radaris and other data broker companies using a fictitious CEO’s name. Our follow-up story noted that Radaris’s attorney — a lawyer with the Boston Law Group named Val Gurvits — admitted his clients had invented the CEO pseudonym “Gary Norden,” and that Radaris also had issued multiple press releases over the years that quoted the fake CEO while seeking money from potential investors.

Attorneys for Radaris waited until the last minute to appear in court and contest what was all but certain to be a default judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, and then told the court that Atlas had failed to serve the real owners and operators of Radaris and several of its sister data broker companies.

Atlas re-filed the lawsuit in June 2025, this time dramatically expanding the number of Radaris family data brokers accused of violating Daniel’s Law. Matt Adkisson, president and CEO of Atlas, said Radaris turned to a tried-and-true playbook: Delaying in court until the last possible minute, and playing shell games with Radaris’s true country of origin and the individuals listed as owners and operators of these sites.

“We refer to this period as their island-hopping phase. Privacy policies changed constantly, and new entities kept appearing from places like the Marshall Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and Seychelles,” Adkisson told KrebsOnSecurity. “Behind the scenes, it felt like a shell game. Defense lawyers told the court that certain entities merely operated the domains and were the proper parties to sue. But by the time a judgment neared, those entities would be discarded and new entities would appear. Meanwhile, the lawyers claimed the other entities that actually owned the domains should not be held responsible.”

Adkisson said when the defendants updated their terms of service to state that Radaris was suddenly managed by a company in the Marshall Islands, Atlas hired an investigator in that country and soon learned the brand new entity that Radaris claimed was managing the company didn’t even exist yet.

Mr. Gurvits stepped forward as Radaris’s attorney in a class action lawsuit the company temporarily lost in 2017 because it never contested the claim in court. When the plaintiffs told the judge they couldn’t collect on the $7.5 million default judgment, the court ordered the domain registry Verisign to transfer the radaris.com domain name to the plaintiffs.

Mr. Gurvits appealed that verdict, arguing the lawsuit hadn’t named the actual owners of the Radaris domain name — a Cyprus company called Bitseller Expert Limited — and thus taking the domain away would be a violation of their due process rights.

The judge in the 2017 case ruled in Radaris’ favor — halting the domain transfer — and told the plaintiffs they could refile their complaint. Soon after, the operator of Radaris changed from Bitseller to Andtop Company, an entity formed (PDF) in the Marshall Islands in Oct. 2020. The plaintiffs never re-filed their lawsuit.

“That seemed to be their modus operandi,” said Raj Parikh, a partner at PEM Law in New Jersey who handles most of the Daniel’s Law litigation for Atlas. “In the past, they won by attrition. Plaintiffs’ attorneys tired of the procedural games and just gave up. That strategy worked for a decade, and it probably would have worked in this case too, since any financial recovery from foreign actors will be difficult. But we were acutely aware of the threat this website posed to law enforcement officers and other public officials in New Jersey, and decided early on to commit whatever time and resources were necessary to remove that threat.”

On August 26, the judge in the New Jersey case found the defendants were given multiple chances to appear and defend the claims against them but had failed to do so. Mr. Gurvits declined to comment on the case, saying it had been assigned to another attorney, a Mr. Victor Worms. In response to questions, Mr. Worms asserted the New Jersey court transferred Radaris.com to Atlas as part of a default judgment against Radaris.com, which is not a legal entity.

“We have made a motion to vacate that default judgment on the grounds that it is void since a non-entity has no legal capacity to sue or be sued,” Worms replied. “We also intend to pursue all appropriate appeals because we believe the transfer of Radaris.com amounts to a forfeiture in violation of various constitutional principles.”

While radaris.com still comes up prominently in results when searching online for U.S. residents by name, the domain no longer sells detailed personal dossiers on millions of Americans. Its homepage now displays a notice from Atlas, as well as links to our previous reporting on Radaris.

EMAIL CONFIRMATIONS

Atlas told KrebsOnSecurity that it has obtained more than 10,000 emails and documents in the course of litigation, and that those messages confirm our previous reporting on the owners and operators of Radaris and its myriad companies.

Atlas said the emails clearly establish that the nominal legal vehicles — Radaris America, Inc.; Bitseller Expert Limited; Digital Orbit Corp; Core Solutions Group Inc; Lucky Solutions Inc; Virtura Corp; Veripages Inc.; Nuform Solutions Inc.; Growth Data Advisors Inc.; Property Experts, Inc — are all administered by the same three or four people from the same mailboxes, share one bank or payment card set, and are all managed from one virtual office address.

“The corpus establishes, with documentary evidence generated independently by banks, payment processors, hosting providers, registrars, software-as-a-service vendors and the operators’ own systems, that radaris.com and at least twenty-five other people-search websites are one operation run by a small Boston-area group whose administrative, financial and technical functions sit on the difive.com mail domain and its successors (centerex.com, scienteco.com, eprofit.com, realmo.com, pub360.com),” reads a summary shared by Atlas.

Atlas said the emails show Radaris.com earns approximately $42,000 a month, while Veripages.com earns around $45,000 monthly via its partnership with the Lifetime Value Company, a marketing and advertising firm whose brands include PeopleLooker, PeopleSmart, NumberGuru, and Bumper, a car history site.

According to Atlas, the emails also showed the Radaris family of websites earns as much as $25,000 each month from their partnership with Onerep, a company that claims to help people remove their information from people-search sites. In March 2024, KrebsOnSecurity revealed how the Belarusian founder of Onerep had launched and operated dozens of people-search sites over the years and was continuing to operate one of them (Nuwber), effectively spreading the disease and selling the cure.

All told, the New Jersey court has so far transferred 14 domain names from the Radaris family of companies to Atlas. Radaris.com now redirects to a notice of the court-ordered domain transfer.

THE ROAD AHEAD

The Radaris family of companies is still potentially facing fines of $1,000 per alleged violation of Daniel’s Law. For the time being, however, Daniel’s Law is facing a constitutional challenge from virtually all of the 150 other consumer data broker firms being sued by Atlas.

The data broker industry responded by having at least 70 of the Atlas lawsuits moved to federal court, challenging the New Jersey statute as overly broad and a violation of the First Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has not yet issued a decision on the constitutional challenge, but either way the case is widely expected to be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, at least 14 other states have now passed laws modeled after the New Jersey statute, with more states considering similar measures. However, West Virginia’s Daniel’s Law was ruled facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment by a federal district court in August 2025.

Justin Sherman is a privacy expert and author of the forthcoming book “The Middlemen,” which examines how the data broker industry powers modern surveillance. Sherman said federal lawmakers have long faced intense lobbying by the technology industry against more restrictive U.S. data privacy laws, but that many powerful industries are now working against passing comprehensive data privacy legislation.

“These days at the federal level, add in the intense amount of lobbying against these laws from social media companies, big tech, cryptocurrency firms, and now AI proponents in the mix who claim that limiting their data scraping is somehow going to collapse the whole U.S. economy under Chinese rule,” he said.

Sherman said people-search companies will continue to thrive unless and until Congress enacts meaningful consumer privacy and data protection laws that are relevant to life in the 21st century. That’s because virtually all state privacy laws exempt records that might be considered “public” or “government” documents, including voting registries, property filings, marriage certificates, motor vehicle records, criminal records, court documents, death records, professional licenses, bankruptcy filings, and more.

At least 25 states have passed or implemented laws requiring age verification for residents seeking to access adult content online, but there is no federal law that limits how the companies that are scanning everyone’s drivers license can use, share or keep the data provided. Had such restrictions been enshrined in law, we may have avoided the recent breach at IDScan.net, which exposed the drivers license information on more than 153 million Americans when the records were briefly turned into a point-and-click identity theft service on the dark web.

“The average person can look at Daniel’s Law and have a perfectly normal reaction, which is that everyone should be covered, not just police and judges,” Sherman said. “But we don’t need more wake-up calls. We’ve had eight million wake-up calls already on the need for better privacy laws. The lack of comprehensive federal privacy law is not for a lack of knowledge, and anyone claiming otherwise is either not reading the news or kidding themselves.”

Plus: The US disrupts the internet’s biggest black market, a Conti ransomware hacker gets prison time, Meta fails to stop AI-generated videos of child abuse.

Your driver’s license can be replaced. The information printed on it is much harder to take back.

That’s the concern after identity verification company IDScan confirmed a data breach involving driver’s license and other government ID information. Reporting has connected the incident to a database containing more than 150 million driver’s license records, raising an obvious question for consumers: What should you do if your information may be exposed?

That’s our lead story in This Week in Scams. We’ll explain what’s known about the IDScan breach, why stolen ID information can be useful to scammers, and the steps you can take now.

Plus, we’re looking at AI agents that reportedly found ways around restrictions, AI-generated political ads that make online video harder to trust, and how AI is adding a new layer to an old jury duty scam.

What Happened in the IDScan Data Breach?

IDScan provides identity verification technology used by businesses to scan and verify identification documents.

On September 4, the company disclosed that it had learned of possible unauthorized access to data stored in its cloud. IDScan said potentially affected information may include full names, driver’s license numbers, and numbers from other government-issued IDs. The company says its investigation is ongoing and that it is cooperating with federal law enforcement.

The scale requires some careful distinction.

According to TechCrunch, cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs had been alerted to a dark web website that allowed users to search driver’s license information belonging to more than 150 million people in the U.S. and Canada, reportedly including photographs. IDScan itself has not said how many people were affected by the breach, though the company has said it holds more than 150 million driver’s license records.

In other words, there is evidence pointing to an extremely large collection of exposed identity information, but an official affected-person count has not yet been established.

Why Stolen Driver’s License Information Matters

A driver’s license number isn’t a password. You can’t simply change it after every breach.

And unlike a credit card, which can generally be canceled and replaced when it is compromised, identity information can remain useful to criminals for years.

That can make this type of data valuable for identity theft and impersonation.

Identity theft happens when someone uses another person’s personal information to pretend to be them, often to open accounts, attempt financial fraud, or make other fraudulent transactions.

There is also a second risk: more convincing scams.

Someone who knows your full name, address, date of birth, driver’s license information, or other personal details may have an easier time convincing you that they represent a bank, government agency, insurance company, or another organization you trust.

That leads to an important rule after any major breach: Someone knowing private information about you does not prove they are legitimate.

Key Takeaways

→ IDScan has confirmed unauthorized access that may involve names, driver’s license numbers, and other government-issued identification numbers.

→ IDScan has not announced how many individuals were affected, so consumers should be cautious about treating 150 million as a confirmed victim count.

→ Stolen identity information can potentially be used for identity theft as well as more personalized impersonation scams.

→ Be suspicious of anyone contacting you unexpectedly about the breach and asking for additional personal information, passwords, verification codes, or money.

How McAfee Protects Against Breaches 

Before a breach  

Personal Data Cleanup reduces your digital footprint by removing your personal information from many data broker sites, making it harder for scammers to find and target you.  

Online Account Cleanup scans for accounts you no longer use and helps you delete them, along with your personal info.  

During a breach  

Identity Monitoring watches for your personal information, including email addresses, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, bank accounts, credit cards, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, and more, across the dark web and known data leaks.   

Plus, we alert users on average up to 10 months earlier than similar services, so you can act fast when your personal information appears where it shouldn’t.  

After a breach  

Scam Detector identifies suspicious texts, emails, and links that often follow major breaches, while web protection blocks malicious websites designed to steal even more of your information.

Other Scam and Security News This Week

OpenAI Agents Reportedly Found Their Own Ways to Communicate Online

Researchers found that OpenAI agents used more than 10 previously undisclosed websites to communicate during testing despite restrictions intended to prevent them from posting online, according to Reuters; importantly, Reuters characterized much of the behavior as closer to spam than hacking. The consumer takeaway is less about an immediate scam and more about AI agents — systems designed to independently carry out multi-step tasks — and why giving increasingly capable AI systems access to outside tools and websites requires strong safeguards and oversight.
Source: Reuters

AI Campaign Ads Make “Seeing Is Believing” Even Less Reliable

AI-generated political ads are increasingly appearing during the 2026 election cycle, including fabricated images, video, and audio involving real candidates, Axios reports. Regardless of the political message involved, the consumer lesson is straightforward: a realistic-looking video is no longer proof that someone actually said or did what appears on screen, so check questionable political content against reliable reporting and original sources before sharing it.
Source: Axios

AI Is Giving the Old Jury Duty Scam a More Convincing Voice

Courts around the country are warning about scammers claiming victims missed jury duty and face arrest unless they respond or pay, while recent reporting has highlighted how AI-generated voices can make phone scams more convincing. The underlying scam hasn’t changed: criminals create fear and urgency, impersonate authority, and demand money — and federal courts stress that they will not demand payment by phone, text, email, payment app, gift card, or cryptocurrency to resolve missed jury service.
Sources: WBUR/Here & Now; U.S. Courts

This Week’s Safety Tips

✓ Consider a credit freeze after sensitive identity data is exposed. A freeze can make it harder for someone to open new credit accounts in your name; IDScan itself recommends considering fraud alerts or credit freezes following this incident.

✓ Never treat personal information as proof of identity. A caller knowing your name, address, driver’s license information, or other details doesn’t mean they represent the organization they claim to.

✓ Verify surprising videos before sharing them. Search for the original speech, interview, campaign account, or credible reporting rather than relying on the clip in your feed.

✓ Hang up on jury-duty payment demands. Courts do not demand immediate payment over the phone to prevent your arrest. Find the court’s official contact information yourself and verify the claim independently.

And we’ll be back next week with more cybersecurity news and scam alerts.

The post Up to 150 Million Driver’s License Records Exposed in IDScan Breach: What to Do Next appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Plus: Tens of millions of US and Canadian drivers’ licenses go up for sale on the dark web, the US military finally tries to tackle the risk online ad data poses to troops, and more.