Data breaches are so common these days that we, as consumers, have become numb to the idea of our information being stolen by criminals. We hear ‘data breach’, but do you know what happens to your information after it has been stolen? In most cases it’s sold on the dark web for later use by criminals.
The dark web is a place that we’ve all heard of, but it’s uncharted and unfamiliar territory for the common person. It’s a portion of the internet that is inaccessible for most people. It was designed with security in mind, but unfortunately, many criminals use the dark web as their main platform to buy and trade illegal goods and services. It is where much of the data collected from a data breach is bought and sold.
Those who use the dark web to buy or sell people’s personal information do it professionally. When they sell this information, they sell it in bulk for someone else to decipher if the information is valuable or not. When the person buying the information receives it, they will try to use the information in any way which will result in a financial gain for them. This may be opening hundreds of bank accounts, filing fraudulent tax returns, and taking out loans. This isn’t happening on a small scale either; these criminals are creating empires on stealing hundreds of thousands of people’s information.
The real threat to you is that the information about you that is sold on the dark web usually never expires. That means once your information is on the dark web, it’s there forever. That’s the tragedy because there are only limited things you can do about it.
What you can do is take precautionary measures to limit the amount of information you share with companies. Although it may make your life a little easier to share some personal information about you with a company, in the long run, you will likely regret doing so. But the most important thing that you can do is to have a plan in place that will help ease the stress of reversing the damage done. That’s where LibertyID can help.
The bottom line is that there’s really no better time than the present to become a LibertyID member for identity theft restoration protection. LibertyID provides expert, full service, fully managed identity theft restoration to individuals, couples, extended families* and businesses. LibertyID has a 100% success rate in resolving all forms of identity fraud on behalf of our subscribers.
*Extended families – primary individual, their spouse/partner, both sets of parents (including those that have been deceased for up to a year), and all children under the age of 25