By Rebecca Schneid | Time Magazine
Billions of personal information records may have been exposed in April after a hacking group gained access to records from the background check service National Public Data (NPD), prompting warnings from cybersecurity experts. NPD confirmed this week that a security incident within their company resulted in a leak of personal information, including social security numbers for millions of people.
In their statement on Friday, NPD warned that the “the information that was suspected of being breached contained name, email address, phone number, social security number, and mailing address(es).” It recommended the public to take a number of steps to safeguard their identities, including freezing their credit and putting fraud alerts on their files at big credit bureaus.
The breach came to public awareness after a class-action lawsuit was filed August 1 in U.S. District Court in Florida, which was first reported by Bloomberg Law.
National Public Data did not share how many people were at risk, but hackers, who have been identified as part of the hacking group USDoD, have been offering, for sale, what they claimed were billions of NPD records since April, though the Washington Post reported that “security researchers who looked at the trove said some of the claims were exaggerated.”
“Consumer data is more valuable today than ever before. At the same time, consumers are more willing than ever to hand over their personal information. The result is that personal data is available and extremely attractive to bad actors. Breaches like this are only going to increase in frequency and severity. Consumers can protect themselves by being more vigilant with their personal data, signing up for breach notifications, and setting up fraud monitoring watches with the credit bureaus when their personal data has been stolen. Companies handling personal data also need to understand—and mitigate—their potential legal liability arising from improper handling or storage of customer data.”
-Paul Coble, Rose Law Group’s AI, intellectual property, and technology law department chair
