August 19, 2024
You probably heard about millions of social security numbers being hacked and released on the internet after a massive security breach last week.
Well – it’s true and now confirmed by the organization that was actually “allegedly” hacked.
National Public Data just posted this “security incident” page on it’s website – officially confirming what we all had been hearing. It says there has been a “data security incident that may have involved some of your personal information.” The company says the hackers may have started getting into their systems in December of 2023 but between April and summer 2024, the hackers were “potentially leaking” this data. The company says the information that was hacked and may have been leaked includes — names, email addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers and mailing addresses.
National Public Data is a major dealer of personal sensitive background information based in florida. Companies like this are used by private investigators, consumer public record sites, human resources and staffing agencies. You’re probably thinking – I didn’t give my personal information to national public data. Well, according to a class action lawsuit filed against the company you probably didn’t. The plaintiffs in that case say national public data gets information like this by scraping nonpublic sources without consent. Which – because congress refuses to pass laws to protect our data – is totally legal. In fact – much of what we know about this data breach comes from this lawsuit filed by a group of people in florida federal court who say they are victims of this breach. The lawsuit claims 2.9 billion records belonging to hundreds of millions of people worldwide were stolen and possibly released onto the web.
Now – the company says they are cooperating with law enforcement and the government but the fact is – this document does not specifically say how many people may have had their data compromised and it certainly does not apologize for the breach.
So what should you do?
Well the company says they are in the process of notifying those who were impacted. They say obviously you should be monitoring your credit report and your financial accounts. If you are a victim of this breach and you suspect you’re now the victim of identity theft, the company suggests going to the federal trade commission’s identity theft.gov page to report the identity theft and get some help.
Lastly they say just because you don’t see any issues today doesn’t mean you won’t so you should be checking your credit reports and accounts regularly.
Social Security breach CONFIRMED from National Public Data here.
Read the class action lawsuit here.
