Kris Holt joined Engadget as a contributing reporter on the news desk in 2018. He has been writing about technology, games, streaming and entertainment for over a decade after starting his career as a sub-editor on a local newspaper. Kris holds a Master of Arts degree in English from the University of Dundee.
Several months after a hacking group claimed to be selling nearly 3 billion records stolen from a prominent data broker, much of the information appears to have been leaked on a forum. According to, the data dump includes 2.7 billion records of personal info for people in the US, such as names, Social Security Numbers , potential aliases and all physical addresses they are known to have lived at.
The data, which is unencrypted, is believed to have been obtained from a broker called National Public Data. It's said that the business assembles profiles for individuals by scraping information from public sources and then sells the data for the likes of background checks and looking up criminal records. is accurate, but in other cases some SSNs were associated with the wrong individuals.
In any case, it's worth taking some steps to protect yourself against any negative repercussions from the leak, such as fraud and identity theft. It's worth being extra vigilant against scammers and phishing attacks that look to obtain access to your online accounts. Keep an eye on credit reports to see if there has been any fraudulent activity on your accounts and inform credit bureausif so.
Be sure to use two-factor authentication wherever possible . And, as always, we highly recommendThis article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.
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