Earlier this year, hackers stole the data of 2.9 billion people from a broker.
Now, that breach threatens to usher in a wave of identity fraud and other crimes, Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said in a recent Los Angeles Times (LAT) interview.
“If this in fact is pretty much the whole dossier on all of us, it certainly is much more concerning” than past breaches, Murray said. “And if people weren’t taking precautions in the past, which they should have been doing, this should be a five-alarm wake-up call for them.”
The report, citing a recent class-action lawsuit, said the hack was apparently carried out by a group called USDoD, which claimed in April to have stolen the records of 2.9 billion people from National Public Data (NPD), which provides personal information for background checks.
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