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A User’s Guide: 10 Ways to Protect Your Personal Data

In 2018, Facebook had to contact over 50 million users who had their personal data exposed in a security breach. This was on top of the 87 million Facebook users who had data sold to Cambridge Analytica without their consent. Our personal data, the stuff that lets the world know who we are, what we like, how we plan our day, what ails us, is valuable.

Personal data is anything that can be linked to you as an individual and it includes:

  • Name
  • Address (current and previous)
  • Date of birth
  • Email address
  • Health data, including scans and test results
  • Identity documents such as passport, driver’s license and so on
  • Employee data
  • Bank and other financial details
  • Login credentials
  • Location data
  • Biometric data
  • Information on your political or religious views

This list is by no means exhaustive.

A study by Armor which looked into black-market prices for personal data found that amounts paid for data varied from $40 to $200, with prices hitting as much as $2,000 for U.S. Green Cards and visa bundles.

Identity theft is also on the rise. Javelin Research found that in 2017, more individuals than ever before in history had their identity stolen. In the U.S., this equates to 16.7 million people having their identity stolen to be used in fraud and other nefarious deeds.

Social engineering is behind many data breaches. The 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon found that around 98 percent of security incidents and 93 percent of data breaches involved behavior manipulation or phishing.

But what do cybercriminals do with our data? Here are some of the ways that our personal data is misused and abused:

  1. Sold on for secondary attacks such as fraudulent loan applications
  2. Used to set up accounts to commit fraud
  3. Used to access (Read more...)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from InfoSec Resources authored by Susan Morrow. Read the original post at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/infosecResources/~3/dnT1122nh48/