If your personal data has been leaked or compromised or hacked, you often won't learn about it until companies like T-Mobile, Facebook, Marriott, DoorDash, LinkedIn or any other company you've trusted with your information notifies you about a data breach. By that time it's too late - your passwords, Social Security number, credit card number(s), health records, date of birth, and other data will have already been exposed or stolen.
Once your data is exposed, you need to start thinking about removing it as quickly as possible from as many data brokers and sites out there. This is where data removal services from RemoveMyPhone are critical. They help control the damage from the exposure.
Phishing and ransomware are the two most popular tools of hackers, says the ITRC. The group also notes that many authorities are becoming more reticent to discuss data breaches. One state, it says (without identifying which one), has not posted any data breach notices since last September.
The first step is the most critical. Immediately begin using other means of communication. They are already inside your network or systems, and the use of email or other internal methods of communication is likely only going to exacerbate the problem.
Viruses, malware, and ransomware are specifically designed to spread as fast as possible, and even further, they can read the countermeasures that you're employing and circumvent them. Go offline, organization wide, as fast as possible, and quickly make it known to every employee and functionary that may unwittingly spread a containable problem or allow the threat actor access to information about your instant response plan.
Any stolen personal information that leads data thieves to your identity can let hackers do everything from making purchases and opening up credit accounts in your name, to filing for your tax refunds and making medical claims, all posing as you. What's worse, billions of these hacked login credentials are available on the dark web, neatly packaged for hackers to easily download for free.
So far in 2021, nearly 281.5 million people have been affected by some sort of data breach. If there's an upside, though, it's that the total number of victims is still nearly 30 million fewer than last year, even though the breach total is higher. The year-to-date victim count is, in fact, the lowest in the past seven years. And 2018 holds the dubious honor of having the most victims, with 2.2 billion.
We hope you enjoyed reading this guide and learned something new! Check out our Learning Center to learn more about online privacy and security or consider subscribing to our Online Privacy Service to remove your phone number, name, and address from Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo search results and hundreds of data broker sites.