Protect Yourself Against New ID-Theft Schemes
Throughout the past decade, consumers have been rocked by one massive data breach after another. Some 500 million Yahoo users were hit by a 2014 data breach that compromised e-mail addresses, passwords and other information. The 2017 hack of credit bureau Equifax exposed Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of 147 million people. Thousands of other breaches exposed the data of millions of consumers, who have come to assume that their personal data has been laid bare somewhere.
Lately, however, fraudsters have shifted from large-scale hacks to more-focused attacks—on businesses in particular. In 2020, the total number of data breaches dropped by 19% compared with 2019, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. “Ransomware and phishing attacks directed at organizations are now the preferred method of data theft by cyberthieves,” the ITRC wrote in its 2020 Data Breach Report. The ransomware strategy, through which criminals encrypt data on a network computer and then demand that you pay for a key to decrypt it, received much attention after hackers forced down Colonial Pipeline, a major supplier of gasoline and jet fuel in the Southeast.
That creates greater impetus for organizations to protect themselves and their employees, but consumers still have plenty of reason to stay on guard in their personal lives, too. Identity thieves haven’t given up on data breaches. Plus, your Social Security number and date of birth are unchanging bits of information that criminals can use years after stealing them to carry out crimes such as opening a new credit account or filing a tax return in your name. And crooks continue to capitalize on current events—especially —to wring money or personal information from victims, says Adam Levin, founder of identity-protection service CyberScout. Increasingly, criminals are contacting consumers directly using scams designed to draw out personal
