It Happened Again! Millions of past and present AT&T customers’ personal information have been exposed to a data breach1. AT&T is not alone in this fight. There may be a sense of relief to those not employing AT&T’s services. Don’t worry, it’s a matter of time before a data breach will visits a firm near you.
Dealing with data breaches has become another annoyance of the digital age. The sad part is data breaches are not going away. The number of data breaches is only growing. So, it is best to be prepared instead of hoping not to be a victim.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has developed a website to help educate and defend against ID theft. The site is https://consumer.ftc.gov/features/identity-theft. In some cases, like with AT&T, we have to rely on the safeguards of the firms we do business with, yet also recognize that hackers and deterrents are a bit of a never-ending cat and mouse game, but there are some things the FTC suggests you can do.
- Read your credit card and bank statements carefully,
- Know payment due dates and look into any late bills,
- Read your health insurance plan statements, making sure your claims match your care,
- Shred documents with personal information,
- Annually review your credit reports and close any accounts you don’t use.
To guard further against identity theft, you can enroll in an identity theft protection service. Generally, these services offer personal data monitoring services, locking down one’s credit report, and can assist with identification recovery. Such firms include Aura, Lifelock, Identity Guard, IdentityForce, and IdentityIQ, to name a few. The cost of these tends to be a couple hundred dollars annually. For full transparency, we have no affiliation, compensation arrangements, or referral agreements of any kind with any identity protection service.
The FTC has developed a sister site to report and recover from ID theft. It is https://www.identitytheft.gov. This site effectively uses crowdsourcing to record what occurred and what accounts were breached in the hopes to identify hacking and thieving patterns. In return, IdentityTheft.gov provides you with a personal recovery plan with recovery steps.
Identity theft has grown into its own industry and has become a risk of modern life. As warm arrives and we bid farewell to old man winter, please enjoy the warmer weather. You deserve it.
1 https://about.att.com/story/2024/addressing-data-set-released-on-dark-web.html
Sources: Identity Theft Resource Center, idtheftcenter.org; usa.gov/identity-theft
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