Hackers could leak the Social Security Numbers of all Americans

A few months after a hacker group said it sold nearly three billion records stolen from a prominent data broker, more information appears to have been leaked on a forum. In accordance with The Sleep ComputerThe data dump included 2.7 billion records of US citizens’ personal information, such as names, Social Security Numbers, possible nicknames and all known residential addresses.

The data, which is not classified, is believed to have been obtained from a vendor called National Public Data. The business is said to compile profiles of individuals by extracting information from public sources and then sell the data on the likes of background checks and criminal record checks. (A proposed class-action lawsuit was filed against National Public Data for violating the law earlier this month.)

In April, a hacking group of the USDoD tried to sell 2.9 billion records it claimed had been stolen from the company and included the personal data of everyone in the US, UK and Canada. The group wanted $3.5 million for the entire 4TB database, but since then pieces of the data have been leaked by various organizations.

Previous leaks included phone numbers and email addresses, but those were reportedly not included in the latest and complete dump. Therefore, you won’t be able to check if your information was included in this leak by typing your email address in the Have I Been Pwned?

The data includes many records for many people, with only one address at which they are known to live. The dump includes two text files with a total size of 277GB. It is not really possible for any independent organization to ensure that the data includes the records of every US person, but as The Sleep Computer indicates, violations may include information from anyone residing in that country.

The publication says that several people have verified the information provided to them and their family members (including deceased relatives) is accurate, but in some cases some SSNs were associated with the wrong people. The Sleep Computer states that the information may have been stolen from an older backup as it does not include the current home address of the people whose data the reporters checked.

In any case, it is worth taking some steps to protect yourself from any negative consequences from the leak, such as fraud and identity theft. It is very important to be very aware of scammers and phishing attacks that appear to have gained access to your online accounts. Check credit reports to see if there has been fraud on your accounts and notify the credit bureaus Experian, Equifax and TransUnion if so. You can ask the bureaus to freeze your credit files to stop anyone else from opening a bank account, taking out a loan or getting a credit card under your name.

You can sign up for services that offer identity theft protection and remove your personal information from the public web to reduce the chances of you being harmed. However, such services usually charge a fee.

Be sure to use two-factor authentication where possible (preferably if you receive codes from an authentication app rather than SMS). Also, as always, we highly recommend using a password manager, don’t reuse the same login credentials for different services and regularly change the password for your most sensitive accounts.

This article contains affiliate links; if you click on such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.