My information has been found on the dark web

[Rickrock]

I received a notice from LifeLock that my information has been found on the dark web. They also said something about LinkedIn. Not sure what I should do, but I changed my password on my email account and on LinkedIn. They also suggested I should check my credit accounts. I tried to open an account on Credit Karma but apparently I had already had an account there with my name or address ending in ".neet" instead of ".net" and I don't know my password. When I try to ask for help I can either ask for help with my id or my password, but not both. There is no phone number to call. Not sure how I can check on my credit or what else I should do and I am really backward with computer stuff anyway. I don't have any children or grandchildren to help me. I guess I'll just sit on it and hope for the best.

 

[Alistair]

One thing that you can do is contact the credit reporting bureaus and freeze your report. If someone does a request it won’t go through. The only thing you have to do is contact them if you are going to have to pull a credit report yourself.

Here’s a link to a article on the subject from financial guru Clark Howard. It gives you the telephone and online options for all the bureaus.

https://clark.com/credit/credit-freeze-and-thaw-guide/

BTW you can get your ID via email with their link, then go back to the site and use the link to change your password. You just have to do it in two steps instead of one.

 

[Rickrock]

Thank you Alistair.

 

[KaraBulut]

Norton/Symantec merged with Lifelock a few years ago. Since then, they have become very spammy. Norton users regularly get unnecessary alerts telling them about security breeches and warning them that they need to purchase LifeLock to protect their finances. Last week, they were spamming their customers about a leak at Neiman-Marcus.

The Linked-In "breech" is probably the incident that happened back in June, 2021. The hacker claimed they broke into LinkedIn's servers. LinkedIn alleged that the information was publicly available information that was collected from the public site. What LinkedIn didn't say is that LinkedIn makes a lot of money selling the personal data of its members, so anyone who buys information LinkedIn and stores it on their servers can be the source of a leak of personal information.

Massive data leak exposes 700 million LinkedIn users’ information [Fortune]

“Our teams have investigated a set of alleged LinkedIn data that has been posted for sale,” the company said. “We want to be clear that this is not a data breach and no private LinkedIn member data was exposed. Our initial investigation has found that this data was scraped from LinkedIn and other various websites and includes the same data reported earlier this year in our April 2021 scraping update..."

The thing about the LinkedIn incident- it was data on 700 million users. LifeLock doesn't have to determine whether you were one of the people whose data was leaked. With that many accounts leaked, LifeLock can just send out a mass marketing campaign to as many people as they can since there's a good chance that some of the people on the receiving end were part of the group of people whose data was leaked.

It's never a bad idea to monitor your credit report and if you see unusual activity to freeze your data. The best way to avoid these incidents is to not give out personal information on the internet, especially on sites that make that information publicly viewable.

 

[Rickrock]

Thank you KaraBulut.

I have frozen my credit with Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. I will be able to unfreeze them if I need to. I will be able to check my accounts on Equifax monthly and it doesn't look like anyone opened any false accounts under my name yet. Credit Karma does not accept my name with either the ending of ".net" nor the erronious ".neet". So far I haven't been able to get onto Credit Karma to check my accounts, but I will keep trying to find a way.

 

[LandSome80]

Call or send a mail to report it...is the safest thing to do and go to the police for ask what you need to do. Or, better, go to the police and after call or send mail for reporting the problems.


By the way don't worry! It happens. Happened to me twice time and I just report it...it would be a disaster if it was private photos or messages but if it is only this don't worry you can resolve it quickly!