What is a Data Breach?
A data breach occurs when confidential information, like your Social Security number, credit card number, or health information, is exposed to or accessed by an unauthorized person.
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How Do Data Breaches Occur?
Banks, schools, doctor's offices, and retail companies all collect and store sensitive and/or finacial information about their customers and employees. In some instances, this information is simply mishandled, either in an errant email or a misplaced storage device like a laptop or hard drive. Other times the data is stolen by hackers who infiltrate servers with the specific purpose of obtaining private information.
What Is the Cost of a Data Breach?
Studies show that individuals who receive a data breach notification letter are more than four times as likely to become vicitims of identity theft and average out-of-pocket costs are double for victims who received a notification of a data breach.1
Information thieves can collect:
- Email addresses
- Street addresses
- Social Security numbers
- Credit Card or bank account numbers
- Health information
What thieves can do with this information:
- Identity theft
- Employment-related fraud
- Loan fraud/payday loan fraud
- Bank fraud
- Benefits fraud
- Tax fraud
- Other identity fraud
Data Breach Statistics
- 26% of U.S. consumers have received data breach notifications.1
- Data breach victims spend an average of 41 hours on resolution.1
- Total breaches in 2010: 6622
- Total number of records exposed in 2010: 16,167,5422
1 Javelin Strategy & Research. "2011 Identity Fraud Survey Report." February 2011.
2 Identity Theft Resource Center. “2010 ITRC Breach Report.” December 29, 2010.
