Ordinary Targets: Why Cybercriminals Are Coming for Average Americans First

There is a comfortable story many Americans tell themselves when the subject of cybercrime comes up. It goes something like this: I don't have much worth stealing. I'm not a CEO. I don't have offshore accounts. Why would anyone bother with me?

That story is not just wrong — it is actively dangerous. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) recorded over 880,000 cybercrime complaints in 2023 alone, with reported losses exceeding $12.5 billion. The overwhelming majority of victims were not Fortune 500 executives. They were schoolteachers, retirees, warehouse workers, and stay-at-home parents. People, in other words, exactly like most of us.

The assumption that obscurity equals safety is the single most exploited vulnerability in American cybersecurity today.

Why "Nothing to Hide" Is the Wrong Frame Entirely

When people say they have nothing to hide, they typically mean they haven't done anything embarrassing or illegal. But cybercriminals are not journalists investigating corruption. They are not interested in your secrets. They are interested in your data — and every living American generates extraordinarily valuable data simply by existing in modern society.

Your Social Security number alone is worth between $1 and $10 on dark web marketplaces, according to Experian research. That might sound trivial until you understand that criminals purchase these credentials in bulk — tens of thousands of records at a time — and run automated tools to exploit them at industrial scale. The value isn't in targeting you specifically. The value is in targeting everyone like you, simultaneously.

This is the architecture of modern cybercrime, and it fundamentally dismantles the logic of "I'm not important enough to hack."

The Specific Data Criminals Extract From Ordinary Lives

Understanding what attackers actually want reframes the entire conversation. Here is what your unremarkable digital footprint actually contains:

Social Security Numbers and Tax Identity The IRS flagged over 1 million tax returns as potentially fraudulent in recent years. Tax identity theft — where a criminal files a return using your SSN before you do and collects your refund — is devastatingly common. Victims often don't discover the fraud until they attempt to file legitimately and find a return has already been submitted in their name. Recovery can take months and requires extensive documentation.

Health Insurance Credentials Medical identity theft is among the fastest-growing categories of cybercrime. A stolen health insurance ID can be used to obtain prescriptions, schedule procedures, and rack up tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent medical bills — all billed to your insurer under your name. The consequences extend beyond finances: fraudulent medical records can corrupt your actual health history, potentially affecting future treatment decisions.

Loyalty Program Points and Stored Gift Card Balances This category surprises many people. Airline miles, hotel rewards points, and retailer loyalty balances are liquid assets in the criminal economy. They can be converted to merchandise, resold, or transferred with minimal friction. Because most Americans don't monitor their loyalty accounts with the same vigilance as bank statements, this theft often goes undetected for extended periods.

Credential Stuffing Targets If you reuse passwords — and according to Google, approximately 65 percent of Americans do — every data breach anywhere on the internet becomes a potential key to your other accounts. Credential stuffing attacks use automated bots to test leaked username-password combinations across hundreds of services simultaneously. A breach at a small e-commerce site you used once in 2019 could compromise your email, your bank portal, or your healthcare provider login today.

Complacency as a Vulnerability

Security professionals often describe the human element as the weakest link in any defense. But it is worth being more precise about what that means for ordinary Americans. The vulnerability isn't stupidity — most people are reasonably intelligent. The vulnerability is indifference born from a flawed threat model.

When you believe you are not a target, you do not patch your software promptly. You reuse passwords because managing unique ones feels like unnecessary effort for someone with "nothing to hide." You skip two-factor authentication because it adds friction to accounts you don't consider valuable. You ignore breach notification emails because you assume they don't really apply to you.

Each of these decisions is rational within the flawed framework. Each of them is catastrophic within the actual threat landscape.

The Automation Factor Changes Everything

Decades ago, hacking required targeted human effort. A criminal had to make a deliberate choice to pursue a specific individual. That calculus made the "I'm not important enough" logic somewhat defensible.

Modern cybercrime operates at machine speed and machine scale. Credential stuffing bots can test millions of username-password combinations per hour. Phishing kits can be deployed by criminals with minimal technical knowledge, targeting hundreds of thousands of recipients simultaneously. Ransomware-as-a-service platforms allow virtually anyone to launch attacks with no specialized expertise.

In this environment, you do not need to be specifically targeted to become a victim. You simply need to be present — to have an email address, a streaming account, a pharmacy login, a tax filing history. The bots will find you.

Anonymity Is Not Armor

Some Americans take comfort in believing their low profile protects them. They are not active on social media. They don't shop online frequently. They keep a low digital footprint.

This is a meaningful risk reduction strategy — but it is not immunity. Your SSN exists in government databases, healthcare systems, employer records, and credit bureaus. Your data has already been collected by dozens of entities you've never interacted with directly. Data broker aggregators compile profiles on virtually every American adult, profiles that are regularly exposed in breaches.

You cannot opt out of having a digital identity. You can only choose whether to protect it.

Taking the Threat Seriously

The first practical step is accepting the accurate threat model: you are a target, your data has value, and automated systems are working continuously to exploit it. This is not a reason for panic. It is a reason for proportionate, consistent action.

Strong, unique passwords managed through a dedicated password manager eliminate the credential stuffing risk almost entirely. Enabling two-factor authentication on financial, healthcare, and email accounts creates a barrier that stops the vast majority of automated attacks. Monitoring your credit reports — all three bureaus, regularly — surfaces tax and financial identity theft early enough to limit damage.

Norton's security suite, including its identity theft protection and dark web monitoring features, is specifically designed for this threat environment — the one where ordinary Americans face extraordinary, automated, industrial-scale risk.

The "nothing to hide" myth is not just incorrect. It is a gift to the people who want to exploit you. The most powerful thing you can do is stop believing it.