Seeing Personal Info DB Leaks These Days Is Creepy
I saw another article about a personal information leak in the news today. Now it's become routine that if a single website gets breached, my name, phone number, address, and even credit info all get exposed. They said some neighborhood clinic had all its health checkup results leaked—I've never even been there, and I have no idea why my info was in their system in the first place.
Now I have this sense of helplessness, like my personal info is already scattered all over the place, and changing passwords won't make any difference. How do you all manage your personal info when it comes to security? I use different passwords for everything and have 2FA enabled, but for things like my phone number or address, there's nothing I can do—I just have to live with them being out there.
6 answers
Yep, even if you set up 2FA on your password, there's nothing you can do about the info that's already been leaked.
I had a site breached before, and after that I got a ton of weird texts. But if your address gets leaked too, that's seriously creepy. Still, you should at least use different passwords.
Two-factor authentication on passwords is a given. For important accounts, it's better to use an OTP app instead of phone number verification. Your phone number is already out there everywhere, so just block the spam texts. As for your address, you just have to give up. For financial info, each bank app has its own security card? The accredited certificate system has changed anyway. Still, if there's a personal data leak, you'll get a text from the relevant institution, so check that.
Well, honestly, these days it’s less about databases being breached and more about handing over my info through terms I agreed to without really meaning it. Hospital personal information leaks are also reported as 'hacking' in the news, but in many cases they’re actually due to staff mistakes or negligence. Saying that changing your password is pointless seems a bit much, don’t you think?
Do you have a source? I'm curious which hospital.
I also got a data breach notification text a few years ago and just changed all my passwords, but what really annoys me is that spam emails have been coming endlessly ever since. So now I use separate email addresses for important and unimportant stuff. But with phone numbers, there's really no way around it.