Identity theft is growing, and it’s not
just your credit and debit card numbers you have to worry about. Hackers hit
the jackpot when they cracked the network at the U.S. government’s Office of
Personnel Management and accessed Social Security numbers, dates of birth and
other personal information on more than 4 million federal workers. A second OPM
breach, announced in June, involved applicants for security clearances who had
revealed intimate details about their lives. That incident brings the total
number of people affected to about 22 million.
In January, health insurers Anthem and
Premera Blue Cross discovered that Social Security numbers, dates of birth and
insurance ID numbers of tens of millions of customers might have been stolen.
Not long after tax-filing season came to a close, the IRS announced that
thieves had used stolen data to log in to IRS.gov and access more than 100,000
taxpayer accounts to generate bogus refunds.
All of those breaches came to light in
just the first six months of 2015. In 2014, the Identity Theft Resource Center
tallied a record-breaking 783 breaches that exposed more than 85 million
records. Among them were debit and credit card numbers of customers of Home
Depot, Neiman Marcus and Dairy Queen, as well as the names, mailing addresses,
e-mail addresses and phone numbers of JPMorgan Chase clients. All told, 76
million households were affected.
To add insult to injury, you may not
even know your data has been hacked. In most cases, the gap between a breach
and the attacked organization’s discovery of it is months or even years. Still
more time passes before the victims are notified, as the company launches an
investigation and braces for bad publicity.
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