Hackers may have stolen the Social Security numbers of every American

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News of a major data breach that could affect nearly three billion people comes to light from a somewhat unusual source — a class-action complaint filed in Florida.

Even as details come to light, we advise people to act as if this is indeed a large and significant breach.

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First, the details. The filed complaint concerns National Public Data (NPD), a company that provides background checks. Per their website, “[NPD obtains] information from various public record databases, court records, state and national databases, and other repositories nationwide.”

The complaint alleges that NPD was hit by a data breach in or around April 2024. [i] The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court further alleges:

The company had sensitive info breached, such as full names; current and past addresses spanning at least the last three decades; Social Security numbers; info about parents, siblings, and other relatives (including some who have been deceased for nearly 20 years); and other personal info.
The company “scraped” this info from non-public sources. This info was collected without the consent of the person who filed the complaint and the billions of others who might qualify to join in the class action complaint.
The company “assumed legal and equitable duties to those individuals to protect and safeguard that information from unauthorized access and intrusion.”

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Further, in June, The Register reported that a hacker group by the name of USDoD claimed it hacked the records of 2.9 billion people and put them up for sale on the dark web.[ii] The price tag, U.S. $3.5 million. The group further claimed that the records include U.S., Canadian, and British citizens.

From an online protection standpoint, this alleged breach could contain highly sensitive info that, if true, would put three billion people at risk of identity theft. The mere possibility of breached Social Security numbers alone makes it something worth acting on.

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