ID theft is stinging, but specific data hacking is difficult to pin down
NEW YORK (AP) – Equifax 2017. Marriott 2018. Capital One 2019.
Hacking data breaches are alarmingly common these days, and personal information about you can lead to identity theft, such as credit cards and loans in your name. But it's hard to blame any specific hack, as the most sophisticated criminals combine data from multiple attacks to better imitate you.
the economic research group Javelin. "It just comes out of the blue, and there's no way to identify where it came from or what I could have done to prevent it."
While the number of reported violations dropped somewhat last year to 1,244, according to nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center, the total number of vulnerable items more than doubled to 447 million. This suggests that hackers are focusing on larger organizations with larger payouts. Last year's figures include data on around NOK 383 million. Marriott guests in a breach that investigators suspect were linked to the Chinese government.
Criminal callers often purchase data sets from multiple hacks to commit scams. The idea is to collect enough information to get past ID verification and authentication checks used by banks and other institutions. A social security database may have your old address, but hackers can simply enter the current one from a newer database.
"We are in this vicious cycle," said Eva Velasquez, executive director of the ID Theft Center. "We are creating and capturing and using more and more data points about a particular person to combat fraud and authenticate people. That in turn makes data more valuable to thieves, so they will increase efforts to get that data." 1[ads1]9659002] Fraudulent card costs are relatively easy to reverse, and US law limits consumer credit card liability, but scams involving new accounts are tougher to deal with. and the victims end up spending hundreds of dollars out of pocket. Javelin estimated that more than 3 million US adults were victims of new account fraud last year, nearly tripling the number in 2013.
Much of it the increase can be attributed to the cumulative effect of data breaches and the type of information stolen. [19659002] mms and passwords can be changed, birth dates and social security numbers usually stay with you throughout your life. And US passport numbers stay for 10 years. Hackers in the breach of the credit monitoring company Equifax in 2017 got some or all of this from 147 million people. Last week, Equifax agreed to pay at least $ 700 million to settle lawsuits.
Just a few days later, Bank One Capital disclosed a breach of personal information to 106 million Capital One credit card holders or applicants in the United States and Canada. The data included self-reported earnings, credit scores and account balances. Although Capital One said it does not believe the information was used for fraud, the breach further raises concerns about leaked data – in this case, the very types of information needed to submit credit card applications.
"Every breach increases the risk because different information comes out," said Deepak Patel, vice president of security firm PerimeterX.
In addition to financial applications, personal information can be useful for telemarketing and email phishing scams as scammers try to trick you by claiming that they already know you, and criminals armed with such data can make you talk to financial institutions to have money transferred or a postal address changed.
You can take precautions like freezing credit, which prevents to open new credit cards or loans in your name. To do so is now free, but you must temporarily release your credit if you apply for a new credit card or loan.
You can also sign up for a credit monitoring service, which notifies you when some pingers credit report, a precursor to open a new account, and there are also ID protection services that will scan the internet underground for evidence that your personal data is for sale. Some of these services are available free of charge to customers affected by data breaches, including those at Equifax.
But Jason Wang, who founded TrueVault to help companies protect data, said there is not much consumers can do when their data is in the wild. A better approach, he said, is to minimize what data is on servers – something a California privacy law can do if it comes into effect as scheduled Jan. 1. Among other things, customers can search for information about what data companies have about them. and ask for deletion – even if companies don't have to do anything unless they receive such requests.
