Here’s what you need to know—and what you need to do—if you have been the victim of a data breach.
If you’ve recently learned that your personal and private information was compromised in a data breach, you must take the necessary steps to protect yourself. To schedule your free consultation with our data breach lawyers, just call (866) 778-5500 today or fill out our secure contact form.
If you think a data breach is “just” a minor incident, you might be surprised at what a nightmare it can turn into. Some of the potential consequences of a data breach include:
If a person uses the breached data to commit identity theft or fraud, the consequences can be serious.
If you are notified that your data has been accessed as part of a data breach, an unauthorized person or party has seen or captured your sensitive personal information.
Financial gain is the motive for most breaches of organizations’ networks that contain private data.
If you are the victim of a data breach,
you may be eligible for compensation.
Whether hackers use the data they capture themselves or sell it to other criminals, the purpose of acquiring the stolen data is usually to commit some type of identity theft or fraud.
Someone with malicious intent could use your personal data to:
Most people become aware of a data breach when they receive a data breach notification letter in the mail. Here’s what you should do when you find out that you were the victim of a data breach:
Financial services company Define Financial reported that “most” identity theft victims lose $500 or less. More than one in five victims of identity theft reported losses above $20,000.
It’s a common misconception that only the super-wealthy need to worry about data and identity theft. An identity thief can withdraw more money from the bank account of a multimillionaire than the average American—but emptying bank accounts isn’t the only way criminals profit from identity theft.
A data breach can affect people of all income levels. Poor and middle-class people present just as much a target for identity theft as the wealthy.
It isn’t always customers’ data that is stolen in a data breach. Some data security incidents allow a hacker to gain access to the personal information of an organization’s employees.
Your employer maintains detailed records that include:
A cybercriminal or identity thief can do a lot of damage with this data. If you are notified that your employment records were hacked as part of a data breach, take all the same steps you would take if your information was stolen as a customer.
After a data breach, you need to check:
If your password was found in a data breach, an unauthorized person may have access to the information this account contains, such as your full name, address, contact information, and birthday. If you have financial account numbers saved in this account to make purchases or pay bills, the unauthorized party may be able to capture this information, too. Your password could be the key hackers use to get the complete personal data they need to steal your identity.
At Console & Associates, P.C., our data breach lawyers will help you to better understand what is at stake after a data breach and what your legal remedies are. We also offer all clients a No Fee Promise, which means that we do not accept payment from you unless we can successfully resolve your case, either through a data breach settlement or a favorable jury verdict.
To schedule your free consultation, just call (866) 778-5500 today or fill out our secure contact form.