By: Kirby G Mack (Vice President of Digital Media)
New lawsuit claims 2.7 billion records from National Public Data, including 500 million Social Security numbers, have been leaked on the dark web in August of this year.
CHECK TO SEE IF YOUR DATA WAS LEAKED IN THIS BREACH HERE: https://npd.pentester.com/
Earlier this month a California resident claimed his identity theft protection service alerted him that his personal information had been leaked on the dark web. That personal information came by way of a breach of the website nationalpublicdata.com.
In a lawsuit, C.H. is claiming hackers have gained access to the personal information of “billions of individuals,” including Social Security numbers. This is not just for those of us still living; it also includes personal information, current and past addresses, and the names of siblings and parents of the deceased as well. The leak of this data opens one up to fraudsters who could now easily gain access to financial accounts, social media accounts, or worse, take out loans and lines of credit in your name.
So who or what is NPD?
National Public Data is a data company that provides background checks. Its deep dive includes your criminal records, vital records, Social Security number traces, and so much more.
“All our data is updated regularly. We guarantee freshness and quality. Search billions of records with instant results, and many searches are no hit/no fee. Our services are currently used by private investigators, consumer public record sites, human resources, staffing agencies and more.” – – Their website claims.
So what can I do?
There are a number of things you can do straight away to help protect your information. First thing you should do is check to see if your data was in this breach using this free service. https://npd.pentester.com/. I then highly recommend taking the following actions:
The immediate recommendation by security experts is to put freezes on your credit files at the three big credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. I did this myself and it only took me about 15 minutes to do it on all three websites. You can also use a service like CreditKarma to do it on your behalf.
Freezing your credit is free, and this will at least stop the nefarious from opening up loans or credit cards in your name.
In addition, there are a number of very reputable protection and tracking services that will instantly alert you if any of your data appears on the dark web for a fee. Services like LifeLock, AURA, and Identity Guard will regularly search for personal information and Social Security number alerts. They also offer services that will monitor your banking accounts and insure you for up to $1M dollars in losses.
Free services such as Have I Been Pwned or PenTester will also monitor your email addresses. This service alerts you if your email has appeared in any recent or past data breaches. It will tell you what the data breach is, when it happened, what information was stolen and what passwords were leaked. I use these service personally. And well… it’s scary.
Here is a small snapshot of my breaches…
Lastly, I would recommend using the 2FA feature on all of your online accounts if it is an option. The two-factor authenticator gives you an additional level of security by sending a secondary code to either your phone, email, or authenticator app. This not only will prevent those without access to your 2FA from logging in, but you can use it as an alert system as well. If you randomly get a code sent to you from your 2FA, that’s an indicator that it’s time to change the password for the service immediately. Cyber Security experts recommend changing your password every 3 months to ensure that even if you are included in a dump, the information provided is likely old and useless.
Remember to not reuse passwords or use the same password for everything. If at all possible, your passwords should just be generated at random. You can use a service like LastPass to do this.
In today’s online digital world, it’s nearly impossible to stay 100% secure. And while most of the information provided in the data breach is already out there, the information stolen from NPD was compiled in a nice little spreadsheet-like way that packaged all of us up in our own little columns, making it infinitely easier for someone to gather our data all at once. It’s best for us all to realize that breaches like this will continue to happen. All we can do is stay alert, monitor our accounts, and secure ourselves as best as possible.
Stay safe, my friends.
*Online protection services mentioned in this article are in no way an endorsement or sponsor. All information is provided for educational purposes.
