When
the average data breach victim receives a notification letter about a big
company losing their personal information, he or she probably has no clue what
the potential consequences actually are. Of course it’s never a good thing when
criminals get their hands on your sensitive information, but the severity of
the data breach from the victim’s perspective depends on what was actually
stolen by the hackers. For example, it may surprise you that your stolen credit
card information is some of the least valuable data in the cybercriminal
market, due to the banking world’s ability to cancel or change that information
quickly.
However,
the most valuable information to cybercriminals is your personal information
that cannot be changed quickly—such as your address, phone number, social
security number, and driver’s license number. Hackers sell this personal
information to other cybercriminals that in turn use it for a myriad of illegal
activities and cause countless problems for the victim. For cybercriminals, a
complete set of personal information for one victim is usually much more
valuable than having partial sets of information for dozens of victims.
This
is why it is so important for companies that have experienced a data breach to
be entirely transparent about exactly what information was taken from them.
Many states have adopted laws requiring companies that failed to protect
personal information to promptly notify all victims of the breach.
Unfortunately,
in a lot of instances these companies send the notification letters, but they
try to downplay the severity of the breach, which gives the victims a false
sense of security when they should actually be taking steps to protect themselves
from potential identity theft. The victims have to know exactly what
information of theirs was lost in order to effectively protect themselves.
To
learn more about how personal information from a data breach is valued and
exploited in the cybercriminal world, follow this link to a well-written
article:
If
you have been notified that your personal and private sensitive information has
been compromised in a data breach, please contact Chris Hellums at
1-866-515-8880 or by email at chrish@pittmandutton.com
today to discuss your legal rights.
