Securing your identity can depend on securing your accounts. Unfortunately, that’s not as easy as it should be.
A new F-Secure survey finds that the average internet user reports having 18 account online accounts.* All of these accounts can contain some personally identifiable data. And some of these accounts—like those attached to webmail addresses—could give an attacker an “in” to access or compromise other accounts, including those with connections to our most intimate financial details.
Securing personal information can be a full-time job
Each of these 18 accounts requires a strong, unique password you use nowhere else, you share with no one, and you can’t possibly remember without hypnosis. Multiply these requirements by 18 accounts and the average person has a full-time cyber security job in addition to all of life’s other responsibilities.
And even if you do everything right and apply best practices to secure all your accounts, your personal information can still be at risk. Between January of 2005 and October of 2019, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse recorded an average of 1.8 data breaches a day.
F-Secure’s IDENTITY THEFT CHECKER can help you find if your email address has already been connected to a leak or a breach. But it’s not enough just to check once, given the non-stop pace of breaches and leaks.
The remarkable reach of a data breach
The infographic below reveals how one criminal can turn one vulnerability into a data breach that thousands of attackers can exploit.
When your personal information is exposed, it can lead to direct attempts for takeovers of your accounts or variations on identity theft that include applying loans and credit in your name. Once the initial attackers are done attempting to monetizing your data, it can end up for sale on the Dark Web, placing you on combo lists that make you targets for more advanced attacks that can lead to exposure of even more data through phishing scams or malware attacks.
Take control
Protecting your identity requires a comprehensive strategy. F-Secure’s new ID PROTECTION solution is a complete solution to taking control of your data wherever it goes.
The identity management continuously provides real-time alerts and guidance how to respond when personal information has been identified in a constantly updated breach database consists of billions of recovered assets and plain text passwords. ID PROTECTION’s combination of human intelligence and Dark Web monitoring to recover breach data faster—so you can act to recover your personal information before criminals can exploit it.
Password management makes it easy to create unique, strong passwords. And these passwords are automatically synchronized and auto-filled on all devices.
You can try ID PROTECTION now on its own or as a part of F-Secure’s premium cyber security suite TOTAL.
* F-Secure Survey, May 2020, 12 countries (Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, UK, USA), 400 respondents per country = 4800 respondents (+25years)
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