What Should Be Our Top Financial Worry in 2024?

What Should Be Our Top Financial Worry in 2024?

Is it the election? No.
Is it the stock market? No.
Is it another pandemic? No.

In 2024 there have already been nearly 3 Billion, yes, Billion, user accounts leaked.  This is up substantially from 2022 and 2023 where approximately 50 million and 300 million user records leaked respectively.  Stop and look at those numbers again. The amount of compromised personal data in 2024 is exorbitant. The largest breach this year exposed 1.4 Billion user accounts in August, executed by a hacker known as “Fenice”. This single attack is believed to affect 270 Million Americans. This breach involved National Public Data, a company specializing in background checks and is now thought to have occurred in December 2023.

Why is it different this time? Well, when social security numbers are involved, it gives a hacker greater the ability to open accounts in your name without your knowledge. This data also may allow them to verify their identity as you, because they have all your sensitive data. They could change your passwords on your bank and investment accounts to then have money diverted to them. These bad apples can basically impersonate you, open credit in your name and use that credit for their benefit.

How does this happen? Cybercriminals look for weaknesses they can exploit. This can be done in a variety of ways, but to name a few, they can acquire user passwords, they could bait someone into clicking on a malicious threat that exposes sensitive data or tricking people into divulging their credentials to an unknown threat. These attacks can come through email, social media, text messages and even phone calls.  It is extremely important to know who you are communicating with and to be cautious about what information you share.

Why is this happening?  User data is a valuable commodity to thieves. The world has changed.  We don’t see the famous bank robbers on the news any longer, for the most part they’re reserved to Netflix documentaries from the 70s, 80s, and earlier.  However, bank robberies are still happening…daily.  Ask your local banker, check fraud, debit card fraud and other types of fraud are how these criminals are cracking the safe on banks these days.  Banks have systems in place to minimize these events, however, they still happen, just like bank robberies did in years past. Beyond the banks, the next target is you.  User data is sold on the dark web to those who are orchestrating large-scale schemes.  They try to get you to open a link with a virus, click on a suspicious attachment from an unknown user and eventually access your most important accounts.

What does it mean to you? Well, there’s a pretty good chance that your data is out there somewhere. This includes social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and much more.  It’s too late to pull it back, however, it’s not too late to lock down your credit and even your social security number.  Contact all three credit bureaus directly to lock down your credit or do so through a credit monitoring service like LifeLock or Aura (not a recommendation).  Also, here’s a link to an article from the Social Security Administration that talks about what you can do if your social security number has been stolen: CLICK HERE

You may also want to consider a secure password keeper, one which is separate from your iPhone or your Google password manager. Recently, I met someone who had their information stolen.  Their Apple ID was the same username and password as many of their other logins. Hackers were able to then take that username and password data and plug that information into a separate iPhone. Keep in mind, because of the duplicate email and password usage, this also gave them access to other accounts due to across multiple platforms. The problem snowballed because the hackers also had access to this person’s email (to confirm the 2 Factor Authentication process) and even set up a duplicate iPhone without this individuals’ knowledge.  I’ll stop there, but as you can imagine, this was a nightmare. 

We’re living in different times and as the world changes, we need to change with it.  No one is immune to identity theft and we’re at a point where being proactive may be the best defense.