Data breaches are rising at an alarming rate and can impact everybody, including our children. Experts say your information is out there and you should be taking proactive steps now to protect yourself.
The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a nonprofit organization that supports victims of identity theft, released its Annual Data Breach report this morning. According to the report, there were 3,205 data breaches in 2023. That’s a 78% increase compared to 2022. The data compromises impacted over 350 million victims.
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Ava Celasquez is the president and CEO of the ITRC.
“A lot of folks think, ‘I'm not the victim of a data breach’ or ‘at least it didn’t happen to me last year,’ and I want people to know, I can guarantee that it absolutely did,” explained Celasquez. “When we're looking at the number of breaches and the number of credentials that were compromised, your information is out in the wild. Now is the time for you to take some of those proactive steps and to protect yourself from that information being misused.”
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All 50 states have security breach laws that require companies to disclose to consumers when their personal information is compromised. However, how that message is delivered varies by business.
If you’re concerned about a data breach, the ITRC recommends:
Freezing your credit: this helps restrict access to your credit report, which then makes it more difficult for other people to fraudulently open new accounts in your name.
Upgrading your passwords: make them unique and try to have a different password with every account under your name.
Using multi-factor identification: for that extra layer of security.
The ITRC offers a free database to consumers that lets you check if any of the companies you do business with have had a data breach in the past. However, it cannot tell if your information was compromised in that breach - only the breached entity has the information.
You can also sign up to receive alerts about any future data breaches. https://www.idtheftcenter.org/
