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Why Majority of Americans Feel Their Personal Information Online is at Risk?
Recent hacking scandals have only gotten bigger and more widespread. Large conglomerates find themselves under attack and their customers are the ones who suffer. Customers routinely have their personal information exposed on the internet due to these attacks. The sheer scale of information being released out into the wild is hard to keep track of, much less clean up.
Earlier in 2018, YouGov conducted a poll asking Americans if they felt vulnerable online. Sadly, 73% of Americans told YouGov “they feel their online data and personal information is vulnerable to hackers.” Almost a third of respondents (29%) said that they paid for computer and data protection services.
Pew Research Center also found daunting results. Pew reported that “a majority of Americans (64%) have personally experienced a major data breach.” The data doesn’t lie — 41% of Americans have had unauthorized credit card purchases, 35% were notified that sensitive information like an account number was no longer secure, and 15% were even told that their Social Security number was being abused in some way.
Everyone knows someone who has had extremely important information leak online after the Equifax hack. As one of the three main credit reporting agencies, Equifax’s servers held a plethora of information – and hackers got a hold of it. Some blatantly posted it online for the world to see. Others sold it to the highest bidders. While a few took the information to use for themselves.
With over 100 million people affected by the Equifax scandal, it is quite likely you or someone you know has had their personal information posted online without consent. According to Ars Technica, millions of driver’s license numbers, phone numbers, and email addresses were exposed in connection with names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers. Americans feel that their personal information online is at risk because of hacking scandal after hacking scandal. Luckily, there are experts who specialize in removing sensitive data from the internet.
Equifax told the Securities and Exchange Commission, “With respect to the data elements of gender, phone number, and email addresses, US state data breach notification laws generally do not require notification to consumers when these data elements are compromised.”
Millions of people had highly sensitive information exposed online, and Equifax, a credit reporting agency that supposedly warns its customers about suspicious credit-related activity, decided to keep quiet when it dropped a massive bowling ball on the feet of hardworking Americans. Experts who deal with removing Social Security numbers, addresses, and phone numbers from the internet can point to Equifax as one of the main leaks.
The financial risks from being exposed online are very real. No one wants to find out that their credit score was ruined because of Equifax, but it is happening to thousands of Americans daily. Having unauthorized mortgages and credit cards will certainly not end well. Unfortunately, many people are dealing with this through no fault of their own. Preventative measures can help save a lot of time in the long run.
Security breaches often occur, leaking personal information online. Equifax is one of many companies that have been breached. According to CSO, a security news website, Yahoo was hacked sometime in 2013 and about three billion accounts were compromised. Yes, you read that correctly, one billion times three. Even today, this ranks as the largest online breach ever.
Yahoo’s various services store immense amounts of private data. Think about how much your email inbox has stuffed inside it. Addresses, phone numbers, photos, and so much more is stored online. Considering the fact that Yahoo at one point was equal to or bigger than Google, it is easy to imagine how much information was dumped into the lap of fraudsters and criminals. Taking steps to remove personal information online is far better than feeling the repercussions in unexpected ways.
Adult Friend Finder was ranked second in CSO’s list of biggest data breaches at 412.2 million accounts. Six databases were compromised and 20-years’ worth of information was stolen. Given the unsavory nature of these websites, exposed users may feel a little anxious. When a similar website called Ashley Madison was hacked, the consequences were swift and harsh for the exposed account holders. Many relationships were strained because hackers wanted to expose private information to the world.
In the age of digital business, cyber security was neglected by many companies in order to cut down on costs. They relied on old hardware and software to carry out critical tasks. The people they were supposed to serve had their most important personal identifying information spill out like a jar of honey. The responsible companies shrugged their shoulders and told people to clean it up themselves. As you can imagine, unless you’ve cleaned up honey before, it’s pretty hard to do.
Data breaches occur so often that they’re easy to ignore. But when multiple companies that you regularly use all have breaches over a span of years, then your sensitive information is slowly but surely being compiled by people who want to gain from your hard work. Even if someone is not actively compiling your information, Google may be indexing it online so it’s a quick search away.
Having your information exposed online makes your life harder to live. A stolen account is a massive headache. Imagine going to work or school and not being able to login. Maybe you can reset your password, or maybe some evil hacker scraped all your information then deleted your account. These things can happen when an account is fully compromised. Good luck trying to get Google or Yahoo to restore an account that has been involuntarily deleted.
It’s far easier to take preventative measures like removing personal information online than to rely on tech giants to provide satisfying customer service on products that they provide for free. Most tech giants have millions, if not billions of customers. Submitting a request to them might take weeks, if not months to hear back from. If your information is exposed online, then you should seriously consider using a professional service to protect yourself.
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