A Hack May Have Exposed the Data of Three Billion People More than a third of the planet may have had their data breached.

[Condobloke]

Your Social Security Number May Have Been Compromised in This Data Breach

National Public Data, a background check company, suffered a data breach in April that allegedly exposed nearly three billion data records records. What's worse, the company scraped this data without anyone's consent.

lifehacker.com

 

[Condobloke]

If you don't have one already, consider signing up for a credit monitoring service. National Public Data is not warning affected users:

 

[KGIII]

I used to have security clearance, meaning I could access classified data when needed. I had to fill out a very detailed application to do this. This application was then verified and I was researched before being issued clearance. This data was in OPM's database and included information about my childhood friends.

It's a lot of personal information. Like, hundreds of pages worth of printed information that's all about me and my life. It's so detailed that all my sexual partners are shared in the documents, at least as many as I could remember at the time.

Well, OPM got hacked. They've never said who did it but they've pointed the finger at 'the Chinese'.

For my trouble, I got a year's worth of free credit monitoring from the government.

Yay! (That's a sarcastic expression this time around.)

Credit monitoring has its place.

I'm not sure what your choices are, but I can contact the three major credit reporting agencies for us Americans and 'lock' my credit. If someone does a credit check it will send back a 'do not issue credit' response. If I want to access credit (sometimes it is advantageous to spend someone else's money) then I need to contact the agencies and 'unlock' my credit. I can then monitor tp see when they've pulled my credit and lock it back down again.

It's a pain in the butt but it's good protection.

 

[Condobloke]

It would appear that credit monitoring services are becoming almost a must have....partly because it offers good protection in normal circumstances, but in the current atmosphere of "a hack a day" it is imperative.

The days of "omg !!!....a hack has taken place and x number of peolles data has been stolen !!shock horror !!!!"
have subsided and "oh yeah ...another hgack....whatever.."....has become almost the norm.

On the dark web the price being asked for tens of thousands of 'items' (your data etc) has dropped noticeably. The laws of supply and demand apply even there.

I don't have much in the way of 'finances', but what I do have is precious.

 

[Diputs]

Your Social Security Number May Have Been Compromised in This Data Breach

National Public Data, a background check company, suffered a data breach in April that allegedly exposed nearly three billion data records records. What's worse, the company scraped this data without anyone's consent.

lifehacker.com

These messages are always funny. What does "their data" mean ?

It's a good example of journalism : they often have no idea what they are talking about. You can easily tell from the title alone.