One of the largest background checking companies in the United States, the National Public Data Company (NPD), was hacked in December 2023. The stolen data appeared on the hacker crime market in April this year. In June, the hacker usdod attempted to sell 2.9 billion records of American citizens for 3.5 million dollars. Another hacker, fenice, released a database containing 2.7 billion records for free on the illegal market a month later and the sensitive information such as names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, and birthdates were all leaked.
Following the incident, NPD cooperated with law enforcement but they did not provide identity protection services for the victims. It is now under pressure from multiple lawsuits and has filed for bankruptcy. Attorneys General from over 20 states are demanding fines, and the Federal Trade Commission is also reviewing the case. The impact of this data breach is too significant, so what do you think of it?
This incident serves as an alarm for everyone. It’s important for us to protect our personal information security in this information age. Everyone should develop good habits for protecting our information. For example, do not fill out our sensitive personal information on any untrustworthy websites, we should change the passwords for our important accounts and we had better set strong passwords in order to avoiding using the same password across multiple accounts.
Original source：https://www.epochtimes.com/b5/24/8/17/n14312713.htm
