Personal information is the currency of the underground economy. Hackers who obtain this data can sell it to a variety of buyers, including identity thieves, spammers and spammers. Identity thieves could use the email addresses to create a phishing scheme designed to trick people into giving up their bank account or credit card numbers. If hackers in fact obtained data on 24 million customers, even if they sell only 5 million email addresses at five cents a pop–cha-ching–they’ve just made $250,000 off of one hack.”]