Social Security Number Leaked? Chances Are, A Criminal Is Already Trying To Use It

Data breaches that expose nan individual accusation of millions of group tin person very existent consequences for individuals, astir notably: personality theft.

A caller study recovered that nan much of a person’s individual accusation is easy accessible to criminals connected nan acheronian web, nan likelier it is that that personification will beryllium a target for criminals.

The likelihood skyrocket if nan accusation includes nan person’s Social Security number, which is usually basal for financial applications for illustration opening a slope account, applying for a in installments paper aliases filing taxation returns, each of which are communal targets for fraudsters.

The findings, published Monday by SentiLink, a institution that monitors customer information for fraud connected behalf of finance companies, are intuitive. But they are believed to beryllium nan first of their benignant showing a clear relationship betwixt nan robust cybercriminal waste and acquisition of people’s identities and real-world attempts wherever criminals effort to perpetrate fraud against those victims.

David Maimon, SentiLink’s caput of fraud insight, told NBC News he conducted nan study by comparing 3 sets of information from group whose accusation is disposable online.

For a baseline database of group whose names and addresses were disposable online, he utilized publically disposable elector registration records. For a group of group whose names and addresses — but not Social Security numbers — were wide traded among criminals, he took names disconnected stolen checks from a ringing of cheque fraud thieves that operated connected Telegram.

For a database of group whose names, addresses and Social Security numbers were each wide traded among cybercriminals, he downloaded a database of astir 100,000 victims, cobbled together from various hacks and many times traded connected nan acheronian web since 2021.

Maimon past compared much than 2,000 group from those datasets pinch SentiLink’s soul records of attempted personality theft to spot really often each of those group had been targeted.

The results were dramatic. Only 2.1% of nan group from elector registration forms had been targeted by personality thieves. Of those whose names were recovered successful nan stolen cheque ring, 12.1% had been targeted. But astir each group successful nan 2021 database pinch Social Security numbers — 97% — had been victims of attempted personality theft, Maimon found.

Data breaches person go progressively common, to nan constituent wherever astir Americans’ accusation has been many times stolen. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission received 1.1 cardinal claims of personality theft successful 2024, though that is believed to beryllium a terrible undercount of nan complete number of victims.

Even children often person their Social Security number stolen, and in installments monitoring services rarely thief victims much. According to statistic provided to NBC News by nan nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center, location were 1,857 caller information breaches successful 2024 that included Americans’ Social Security numbers.

While Social Security numbers are routinely hacked, it’s often intolerable for a unfortunate to cognize really wide their accusation has been shared — a cardinal constituent of SentiLink’s findings. Not each breaches are equal, and cybercriminals often waste hacked information only to nan highest bidder to support it much exclusive.

When a person’s accusation does go wide repackaged and many times traded betwixt criminals, they are targeted by thieves many times for a longer play of time, Maimon found.

The champion people of action, Maimon said, is for group to frost their in installments ratings pinch nan 3 awesome in installments agencies and to show their ChexSystems Consumer Score to spot if anyone has opened slope accounts successful their name.