You’ve likely never heard of National Public Data, the company that makes its money by collecting and selling access to your personal data to credit card companies, employers, and private investigators. It now appears that the hacker group USDoD snatched about 2.9 billion of its records. Odds are that your records — including, possibly, your Social Security number (SSN) — are in those databases.
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USDoD wanted to sell this data for the low price of $3.5 million. Ironically, before USDoD could profit from the theft, another threat actor, Fenice, swiped the data and released it on the dark web.
How bad is it really? According to the security organization Vx-Underground, the stolen data includes:
- First name
- Last name
- Address
- Address history (three decades’ worth)
- Social Security number
Vx-Underground also found that “the database does not contain information from individuals who use data opt-out services.” These are sites or services that allow you to say no to a company or group that wishes to keep your records.
That’s good to know, but for many of you, it’s probably a little late.
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