I saw this story over at Crooks & Liars and decided I needed to share it here. Long story short, a massive data breach involving millions of us has happened. After you watch the video, click the link to a cybersecurity company in Florida that can tell you if you’re part of the hack. I found myself, and then I entered in the birthdates of a few friends whose birthdays I know off the top of my head. One of them is Murf. I also found two other friends’ identity were breached and I emailed them. So we offer this as a public service to see if you, too, have been hit. Damn. Not enough to worry about and we have to deal with this, right?
A few more notes from Crooks & Liars.
The Social Security numbers of every American might currently be for sale on the dark web, marking potentially the largest data breach ever recorded.
This alarming news was first revealed following a class action lawsuit filed in Florida in early August.
Breached Company: National Public Data
National Public Data, a Florida-based company, was the target of this breach. The company initially reported that 1.3 million people were affected.
Protecting your personal information is crucial, especially if a data breach occurs. Here’s a step-by-step guide to safeguarding your information:
1. Place a Freeze on Your Credit Report
Placing a freeze on your credit report prevents any new credit from being issued in your name. This is a highly effective measure to protect your identity.
Steps to Place a Credit Freeze:
- Visit USA.gov for detailed instructions on initiating a credit freeze.
- You need to request the freeze with each of the three major credit reporting agencies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
- Follow the specific instructions provided by each bureau to complete the freeze process.
2. Monitor Your Financial Accounts
Regularly review your financial accounts for any suspicious activity.
Go to this link, which is a cybersecurity firm called Pentester and follow the prompts. You’ll see if you’re part of the data breach. If you find out any information which could be of use to all of us, please share. Thank you.
Yes I received a notification of precisely this from my credit monitoring service. All I could do is put a freeze on my credit.
I guess we’re all going to be doing that. I checked my name in Nevada, nothing. But then I checked in California and they had everything, old addresses, the whole nine yards. Oh well. I guess life is a fishbowl now. No privacy.
It’s kind of crazy because I try to be careful and I don’t know what we can do to prevent this.
I don’t know if there is any way. The hackers get more sophistocated as time goes on. We just need to keep our eyes open. In my case nobody can use my credit information to borrow huge sums of money, believe me.
It’s kind of crazy because I try to be careful and I don’t know what we can do to prevent this. I would like to check for my husband but don’t know where to go to check.
I gave you the link to go check, Pentester. It’s in blue at the bottom of the article.
Done, thank you. Sorry for the duplicate comments.
Damn. I’m part of the breach. Have spent time with the three credit bureaus and managed to freeze with two of them. F**king Equifax is useless. The website won’t process multiple attempts to complete sign up, and the phone # is no good either. They’re closed and I can either call back tomorrow or try the website again. You’d think a company that size would have 24 hour phone staffing! Oh well. Someday, years from now lawyers will fatten themselves with a class action lawsuit and those of us who got screwed will get nothing. Or some bullshit trinket we’ll have to jump through hoops to collect on. And when most of us don’t bother guess what? The f**king lawyers will have written in a provision that THEY get THAT too.
This is what comes from conservatives and their “the govt. can’t do anything right – the PRIVATE sector should handle everything” philosophy. What they will do of course is cut corners in the name of profits and this kind of shit is the result.
I was going to look you up but couldn’t remember your birthday, only that it’s in August. But the few people I did look up were all hit, except for one friend who I think probably pays for some kind of high end security. Maybe that’s how it will be, we’ll all have to pay for “protection” like in the days of the mobsters.
Maybe I need to go to the kitchen and make myself a tinfoil hat but I can’t help but wonder if this is EXACTLY the plan. Enrich private enterprise by forcing people to buy a service they shouldn’t have to pay for. Think about filing taxes and how the tax prep industry has made themselves a bundle. There is no reason, NONE that the IRS can’t allow anyone to file both federal AND their state taxes for free via the IRS website. But various private entities lobbied and got things so that even if simple federal filings could be done directly with the IRS one had to pay to also file their state return via Tax Act, H&R Block or some other company!
Maybe at some point the federal govt. has f**ked up and allowed a hack that exposed a hundred or more million people’s sensitive data but I can’t think of anything on that scale. There have I think been a handful of far more limited breaches but nothing on the scale that’s happened with private contractors, much less something this massive.
Yes, the company involved here is going to get sued and hurt badly. Maybe even go out of business but the top folks, the one who can (and do) make big campaign donations will walk away with boatloads of money. And who knows what goes on behind close doors? Maybe there’s a cabal like the major oil companies. Maybe a tacit agreement was reached that included those major credit reporting agencies (like the ones you’ve mentioned) to move us to a point where we have no choice but to pay up or see our lives ruined by credit theft. It would require someone to fall on their sword BUT if there was for lack of a better word a gentleman’s agreement – (greedy assholes agreement maybe?) to “take care of” said company that’s what’s happened.
We shouldn’t have to pay, not even once to have our data protected. For damned sure we shouldn’t have to pay over and over again! However I see things unfolding just that way.
I’ve always said the problem with this crap started by allowing credit card companies, etc. to ask and be given our s.s. numbers so we can obtain credit. s.s. numbers were not supposed to be used for ANYTHING outside of tax purposes and getting our s.s. benefits. Now you cannot get any kind of credit and a lot of other things unless you give it out. This problem is not new and happened before the internet was widely used-the internet just made it easier and more profitable.
We either need new s.s. numbers which are not allowed for any other purpose than taxes/ss or….there is no or. Every american needs to be issued a new number. What we have right now is ten kinds of bullshit.
I checked and found some disturbing information. it showed three addresses for me in Jax. two I had lived at one my dad had briefly lived but I hadn’t and had never used that address. all three showed, in addition to my son my name and middle initial but a different ssn.
This gets scary. There’s so much public information about us. I don’t care about addresses, per se, but when it’s my phone number, social, email, all that, then it’s a set up to be inundated by telemarketers and I hate that.
Thanks for the info. Yup,me too…every address I’ve ever lived at here in Baltimore over the last 30+ years and even the one in Kingston NY where I resided for less than a year. I guess I know how I’ll be spending a frustrating amount of time today.
Better to know than not know. I was blown away that the three friends I looked up whose birthdates I knew came up in the data base one right after the other.
When you freeze your credit via the reporting agencies, do you have your bank account closed, too? Thank you
I froze my credit reports last year due to another breach. This one is showing some of my info is hacked. So sick of this! For these a**holes I would bring back public executions. People who do this don’t deserve to be amongst the rest of us.
I understand your sentiment completely. This is either the second or third data breach I’ve been involved with. It gets tiresome.
I looked at Pentester and saw that what they are asking for is not enough to compromise you if you aren’t already. I also looked up three revies of Pentester. One said it’s definitel a scam The second gave it a score of 71.5 out of 100 (which I interpreted as probably “well meaning,, not careful enough.” the third said it is absolutely NOT a scam. So go figure.
“Reviews” can be problematic. Any decent reviewing company (like Trustpilot) will verify that you actually used the company or service you’re reviewing.