About 4 months after a notorious hacking group claimed to have stolen an extraordinary amount of sensitive personal information from a major data broker, a member of the group has reportedly released most of it for free on an online marketplace for stolen personal data. The breach — which includes Social Security numbers and other sensitive data — could power a raft of identity theft, fraud and other crimes. If people haven’t been taking precautions, this should be a 5-alarm wake-up call. A few key pieces appeared to be missing from the hackers' haul. One is email addresses, which many people use to log on to services. Another is driver's license or passport photos, which some governmental agencies rely on to verify identities. However, you should still take steps to protect yourself. Here are steps you can take to start:
- • If you suspect your Social Security number or other important identifying information about you has been leaked, experts say you should put a freeze on your credit files at the 3 major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. You can do so for free, and it will prevent criminals from taking out loans, signing up for credit cards, and opening financial accounts under your name. The catch is that you’ll need to remember to lift the freeze temporarily if you’re obtaining or applying for something that requires a credit check.
- • You can sign up for a service that monitors your accounts and the dark web to guard against identity theft, typically for a fee. If your data is exposed in a breach, the company whose network was breached will often provide one of these services for free for a year or more. • If you want to know whether you have something to worry about, multiple websites and service providers such as Google and Experian can scan the dark web for your information to see whether it's out there. But those aren't specific to the reported National Public Data breach. For that information, try a free tool from the cybersecurity company Pentester that offers to search for your information in the breached National Public Data files. Along with the search results, Pentester displays links to the sites where you can freeze your credit reports.
- • Experts say it's extremely important to sign up for two-factor authentication. That adds another layer of security on top of your login and password. The second factor is usually something sent or linked to your phone, such as a text message; a more secure approach is to use an authenticator app, which will keep you secure even if your phone number is hijacked by scammers.
