Every person in America may have had their Social Security numbers stolen and shared on the dark web in a massive National Public Data breach. The unprecedented breach involved 2.9 billion records, including names, phone numbers, and addresses.
According to a class-action lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a hacker group known as USDoD attempted to sell the data for $3.5 million in cryptocurrency on the dark web. USDoD claimed in April to have stolen personal records of 2.9 billion people from National Public Data, which offers personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies and others doing background checks. If true, this means every American is potentially at risk for identity theft. The breach also impacted people in the U.K. and Canada
2024 has already been a year for negative data breach incident milestones. The number of data breach victims rose nearly 500% in the first half of 2024 when compared to 2023 as a result of major incidents including Ticketmaster and AT&T.
According to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), in the first half of 2024:
- There were 1,571 data breaches reported, affecting a total of 1,007,470,089 victims.
- Cyberattacks caused 78% of all incidents.
- Financial services companies were targeted the most, followed by healthcare and professional services.
This is not the first time an alarming number of SSNs have been stolen. In 2017, Chinese hackers penetrated Equifax’s systems and stole millions of Social Security numbers. What makes the NPD data breach notably worse, however, is that the stolen social security numbers from the 2017 leak never resurfaced on the dark web.
A small company in Florida has created a free tool called Pentester that allows people to check if their details are among the stolen records. The tool prompts people to input their first name, last name, state, and year of birth. It then runs a rapid check of billions of records to determine if Social Security data has been exposed.
The National Cybersecurity Alliance and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group both advise consumers to freeze their credit. Freezing your credit is free, won’t affect your credit score, and can be easily unfrozen when needed.
Why Freeze Your Credit?
Freezing stops anyone, including you, from opening new credit in your name. If needed, you can temporarily unfreeze it.
Freeze Your Credit
Contact Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to freeze your credit. You’ll need to do this with each bureau, either online or by phone. It’s smart to keep your credit frozen by default. You can also freeze your children’s credit. Identity theft can go unnoticed until they turn 18. Check the FTC for more info.
Take Action
If you spot unauthorized credit activity, report it to the bank or credit card company immediately.
Our MyPrivacy 360 product provides users with a scan of exposed online data, It actively removes and scans the web for repeatedly exposed data. Easy to set up, Fortune 500 companies in the financial, security and credit reporting industries rely on us to power their removal tools.
