A background-checking company called National Public Data (NPD) has acknowledged a data breach that exposed millions of U.S. social security numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, and names. The leaked information was likely scraped from public governmental records.
At some point in the past year, one or more hackers quietly breached a background-checking company called National Public Data and exposed millions of U.S. social security numbers , e-mail and mailing addresses, and phone numbers and names. The accuracy and significance of some of these data, much of which NPD had probably scraped from public governmental records, is questionable.
“I had no idea it would become big—I wouldn’t have given it such a stupid name,” Hunt says. To “pwn” someone is tothem, per Internet slang that enjoyed a heyday in the early 2000s. It also means to take unauthorized control of someone’s computer hardware or, say, e-mail account. After a breach like this, there are a few standard suggestions—such as placing freezes with credit reporting bureaus and making sure your passwords are robust. Is there anything else people should be doing after a breach like this?, where you should change your password and probably have a conversation with your . In this case, it’s all the fundamental stuff you really should be doing anyway. You should have whatever freezes you have available on credit until you actually need to apply for it.
Earlier this year there was another one going around. It’s called the “mother of all breaches.” That was like 20 billion records or something. Well, it’s just that someone siphoned up a whole bunch of breaches and put them all together. Add one more, and now you’ve got the bigger .is an important figure. But without the context of what that actually means, it’s hard to understand it. So I think a much fairer metric is how many people are impacted by this. And clearly, if it’s just U.S.
Disclosure doesn’t necessarily mean letting the individuals know. It’s usually disclosure to the regulator unless we’re talking about sensitive personal information—health data, for example. The carve out in Australia is there’s got to be a likelihood to cause serious harm. The Florida situation, like you just mentioned, is a notice. California’s got , but I believe even under that, can still decide whether or not to notify individuals in the vast majority of cases.
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