Billions of personal information records may have been exposed in April after a hacking group gained access to records from the background check service National Public Data (NPD), prompting warnings from cybersecurity experts. NPD confirmed this week that a security incident within their company resulted in a leak of personal information, including social security numbers for millions of people.
In their statement on Friday, NPD warned that the “the information that was suspected of being breached contained name, email address, phone number, social security number, and mailing address(es).” It recommended the public to take a number of steps to safeguard their identities, including freezing their credit and putting fraud alerts on their files at big credit bureaus.
The breach came to public awareness after a class-action lawsuit was filed August 1 in U.S. District Court in Florida, which was first reported by Bloomberg Law.
National Public Data did not share how many people were at risk, but hackers, who have been identified as part of the hacking group USDoD, have been offering, for sale, what they claimed were billions of NPD records since April, though the Washington Post reported that “security researchers who looked at the trove said some of the claims were exaggerated.”
According to David Brumley, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, these breaches will become more popular with centralization of data.
“We are not talking about a startup here,” Brumley said. “Looking forward, we have to have higher standards for the custodians of our data.”
Here is how you can check if your social security has been compromised by the breach and what to do to protect your information.
How to check if your social security information has been compromised
NPD has not notified specific people whose data has been compromised. In their statement, they say they are working with law enforcement to review affected records and…
