A new lawsuit is claiming hackers have gained access to the personal information of “billions of individuals,” including their Social Security numbers, current and past addresses and the names of siblings and parents — personal data that could allow fraudsters to infiltrate financial accounts or take out loans in their names.
The allegation arose in a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Christopher Hofmann, a California resident who claims his identity theft protection service alerted him that his personal information had been leaked to the dark web by the “nationalpublicdata.com” breach. The lawsuit was earlier reported by Bloomberg Law.
The breach allegedly occurred around April 2024, with a hacker group called USDoD exfiltrating the unencrypted personal information of billions of individuals from a company called National Public Data (NPD), a background check company, according to the lawsuit. Earlier this month, a hacker leaked a version of the stolen NPD data for free on a hacking forum, tech site Bleeping Computer reported.
I had some issues too. One was my overly locked-down FF browser. Once I switched over to my more relaxed FF DE it worked better. Had to attempt the text code a couple of times on Experian for it to eventually work. All three locked now and the frustrations were mostly minor.
The biggest frustration was that I had to do all of this in the first place. Now I am compelled to maintain accounts with these damn credit bureaus too. I just love modern conveniences.
Also, there is a fourth credit “bureau” called Innovis. I did nothing with them. Should I? Checking account creation via banks also use ChexSystems. Theoretically, a checking account could be opened in your name. I did nothing with them, either. Not sure if I need to.