Data Breaches Larger Than First Thought

Now more than ever it is possible you could become a victim of identity theft. Two recent breaches have affected billions of people. Jerad Albracht of the state’s Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection says a breach of Yahoo discovered last year is even worse than originally estimated. Yahoo officials announced last week it could affect 3 billion people. Even if you are not registered with Yahoo, you could be impacted through one of their other sites or programs. Yahoo emails, Tumbler, Yahoo Fantasy Sports, and Flickr all fall under the Yahoo umbrella. The Equifax breach is also larger than first thought. The original estimate was 143 million Americans were affected, but that number has increased to 145.5 million Americans. The Yahoo breach gave hackers access to names, email, addresses and passwords, but no financial information. The Equifax breach included access to Social Security numbers and other personal information. It’s recommended those impacted by the Equifax breach at the very least use the three credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, to place a fraud alert on their credit.