WARNING: Millions of Social Security Numbers Were Leaked — Do This

2.9 billion lines of personal data including Social Security numbers phone numbers and addresses were stolen by hackers and leaked after a data broker called national public data experienced a data breach months ago just this week the company finally admitted that it had experienced a breach and was working with law enforcement officials and government investigators rumors of a massive leak first started circulating in April after a known hacker began attempting to sell a huge collection of data including Social Security numbers for $3.5 million the biggest thing you can do to protect yourself from criminals using a leaked social security number is to place a free credit freeze with the three major US credit bureaus Equifax experion and Transunion by US federal law the credit bureaus are required to allow you to freeze your credit reports for free you will need to place a freeze with all three of the credit bureaus though a credit free simply means that the credit bureaus will not allow creditors to access your credit report this will help prevent identity thieves and criminals from getting any new loans and other lines of credit created and approved in your name and one of the best parts of a credit freeze is that it will continue to remain Frozen until you choose to lift it there's virtually no downside to having your credit Frozen other than a taking a little time on your part part to set up if you happen to need to obtain a new line of credit for yourself you can always remove or temporarily lift the credit freeze at any time but having a freeze in place is an extra layer of protection that can help prevent cyber criminals and scammers from using your social security number to wreak havoc on your finances with how many security breaches there are out there nowadays it's best for everyone to operate under the assumption that their information has been leaked and to take extra steps like this to limit the damage thieves can do with that information with this massive breach it would also be wise to begin more closely monitoring your credit report to make sure no suspicious activity is taking place as of October of 2023 the Federal Trade Commission announced that the credit bureaus will now permanently allow everyone to check their credit report once a week for free to check if your information was compromised in the national public data breach there are are also two free tools being offered by cyber security companies I'll link to a PC Magazine article in the description below explaining the tools and you can research them more and decide if you'd like to use them to find out more about whether your info was compromised in this leak stay safe and be sure to subscribe to the channel for more finance and business content thanks