Social Security numbers, names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers were found in 2.9 billion records within the data breaches. The security company Pentester.com tool shows whether data is involved or not.
Personal information of millions of Americans has been hacked for data breaches
Millions of Social Security numbers have been hacked after a major data breaches. This is how you protect yourself.
Public data from countries that aggregate data and provide background checks have confirmed they are suffering from a massive data breaches, including Social Security numbers and other personal data for millions of Americans.
Coral Springs, Florida, posted a notice this week on its website that “it appears to be a data security incident that contains some of your personal information. It is believed that in late December 2024, there is a potential leak of data for 2024 and summer, which is thought to have involved a bad third-party actor who was trying to hack into the data in late December 2023.”
News about the violation first came from a class action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and was first reported under Bloomberg Act. According to law firm Schubert, Jonckheer & Kolbe, stolen from National Public Data (NPD) was a record of 2.9 billion, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers and relatives, at least 30 years ago.
The compromised data included a name, email address, phone number, mailing address and Social Security number, according to the NPD. The company has been working with investigators and said it is “incorporating additional security measures in its efforts to prevent such violations from recurring and protecting the system.”
National Public Data Breaches: Why you need to worry about why you are at a large scale and what to do.
Identity Protection: How and Why Freeze Credits
How to check if your social security number and data have been published
Cybersecurity company Pentester said they have created tools that they can use to get data and see if the information is compromised. Displays your name, address, address, history, and Social Security number. You can find it at npd.pentester.com.
Financial institutions use Social Security numbers for loans and credit card applications and investments, so information available to bad actors poses serious risk, Pentester.com co-founder Richard Glaser said in an advisory on the company’s website.
He also suggested freeze the credit report. “Your name, address and phone number may change, but your Social Security number will remain the same,” says Glaser.
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Data Breach: How to Protect Your Credit
The NPD also recommends that consumers “advise them to closely monitor their financial accounts and promptly contact financial institutions if they are seen in fraudulent activity.” Consumers may want to get credit reports and receive fraudulent warnings in their credit files, the company said.
Consumers need to do more and freeze their credit reports, Papadimitriou, CEO of Parsonal Finance Site Wallethub, told USA Today. “Setting up fraud warnings is not as effective as freezing your report,” he said.
“The fraud warnings are perfect for lenders. They can be easily ignored. They are not really useful in reality,” Papajimitriu said. “On the other hand, Freeze stops scams for that truck by preventing identity burglars from opening an account in your name.”
He and other security experts suggest that consumers take that step, as personal data is likely to be in the hands of hackers.
The class action alleges that it was cybercrime group USDOD that accessed the NPD’s network and stole unencrypted personal information. The group then posted a database about April 8, 2024 that said it had information about Dark Web’s 2.9 billion people, and attempted to sell it for $3.5 million.
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