Your Information May Already Be On The Dark Web

By Author: Reinfosec
Total Articles: 10
Comment this article

By the time a company tells you your data’s been stolen as part of a breach, your information may already be on the dark web. Here’s how to keep pace with the hackers.

Your personal data’s been stolen, but you often won’t learn about it until long after Facebook, Equifax, Marriott, Yahoo, DoorDash or some other company you’ve trusted with your information notifies you that your birthday, Social Security or credit card number, health records or some other piece of personal information has been exposed in a data breach.

With your stolen information, hackers can do everything from making purchases and opening up credit accounts in your name to filing for your tax refunds and making medical claims, all posing as “you.” What’s worse, billions of these hacked login credentials are available on the dark web, neatly packaged for hackers to easily download for free.

You can’t stop sites getting hacked, but you can take a few steps to limit the damage done from the breach. If you use a password manager that creates unique passwords, you can ensure that if one site gets breached, your stolen password ...
... won’t give hackers access to your accounts on other sites. (A good password manager can help you manage all your login information, making it easy to create and then use unique passwords.)