153 Million Driver's License Scans Reportedly for Sale on Dark Web

A dark web listing claims to offer roughly 153 million scanned driver's license images from the United States and Canada, according to a report from SecurityWeek. The data is believed to have originated from IDScan.net, a company that provides identity verification and age-check technology used by many retailers, bars, and online platforms to confirm customer identities.

Driver's license scans are highly sensitive because they combine a photo, full name, date of birth, address, and license number in one document — making them extremely valuable for identity theft, fraudulent account creation, and social engineering scams. If genuine, a breach of this scale could affect individuals well beyond the direct customers of IDScan.net, since many businesses rely on such services behind the scenes without customers realising it.

For Australian small businesses that use third-party identity verification tools, this incident is a reminder to vet vendors carefully and understand exactly how customer ID data is stored, encrypted, and retained. Even if your business wasn't directly involved, customers whose IDs were scanned by any similar service could become targets of follow-on scams referencing their real details, so staff should be alert to unusually convincing phishing or impersonation attempts.