A relative’s SSN was recently leaked on the dark web, as notified from their credit card company’s monitoring service. They said the CC company didn’t provide further info.
They want to remove the SSN from the web and whatever else info that might’ve been leaked. I don’t think there’s much that can be done in that way since getting anything removed from the internet can be near impossible.
For now, I’ve recommended them to use EasyOptOuts & Simplelogin, to freeze their credit, and to be more mindful of the things they sign up for in the future.
What else do you think they should do?
Also, they asked if Norton’s LifeLock would be useful, so I’m wondering if there’s any privacy respecting identity theft protection services similar to it?
I’m not sure those services helps with credit freeze. They should look to have their credit freeze in the credit agencies:
Transunion
Experian
Equifax
Like is recommended in the government website. If I’m not mistaken there are some additional institutions that are required to be notified in order to get additional protection but I can’t remember which are and this was discussed in some other thread I think.
Personally, I feel that those things do more harm than good in most cases. The data won’t be removed from the internet. They have to learn to be aware of their data and the whole risk that they are taking when exposing personal data like this.
Edit: Apologizes, re-reading your post I realized my bad interpretation about the recommendation that you gave. Please ignore the first part of my response.
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We found the same thing (SSN on Darkweb). What I think I learned was there is nothing that we can do now except:
- monitor Social Security to make sure no one is using it
- block credit through a freeze
- Extra steps are working to reduce our future data exposure through the “Opt out” companies mentioned above.
I look forward to learning additional steps.
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