In this day and age, privacy is an ever more rare and valuable commodity. Technologies such as the Internet and smartphones have brought unprecedented ease and speed to information discovery. Just like everything, these developments have their pros and cons. On the positive side, useful information, education, and knowledge can be spread quickly and empower people globally. People around the world who have traditionally been disadvantaged from information asymmetries now have the tools that can give them an equal opportunity to pursue their personal development goals and dreams. However, on the downside, the same technology can empower entities with dubious agendas to spy on people, like Big Brother in Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell's classic dystopian novel published in 1949.
There are malicious hackers who break into central servers to steal valuable private information and nobody is fully protected against that. It has happened to pretty much all big multinational banks, multibillion dollar corporations handling personal data such as Experian, tech giants, and even top security government agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA). When there is a clear valuable target or central point of failure, hackers always find a way.
Moreover, there are numerous data brokers who make business out of people's personal information. They collect it lawfully or not, analyze it, and sell it to anyone who is willing to pay—usually advertisers, but also political campaigns as the recent case with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica showed.