Your most valued asset for thieves: your ID
Major data breach means most South Africans are at risk
After the "Master Deeds" data breach, you should expect to be the target of identity theft - and you should be taking protective action, says Manie van Schalkwyk, the executive director of the non-profit Southern African Fraud Prevention Service. Identity theft is the crime of getting the personal or financial information of someone so that the criminal can be approved for credit or make purchases in that person's name. Described as South Africa's largest recorded data leak, the Master Deeds breach was made public almost a month ago - yet some credit bureaus are reporting no significant increase in the number of consumers checking their credit reports for signs of identity theft. A file containing the ID numbers of 66 million South Africans (some deceased) was found to be available on a publicly accessible web server. The data included the names, e-mail addresses, gender, ethnicity and income estimates of South Africans. Troy Hunt, the information security expert who exposed the lea...
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