U.S. Hack May Have Disclosed 18 Million Social Security Numbers

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

by Chris Strohm
June 24, 2015 — 1:35 PM EDT

The agency that manages U.S. government personnel records is investigating whether Social Security numbers for as many as 18 million people were taken in the massive cyber-attack revealed in recent weeks, the director of the federal jobs agency told a congressional hearing Monday.

“The 18 million refers to a preliminary, unverified and approximate number of unique social security numbers in the background investigations data,” Katherine Archuleta, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, testified.

“It is not a number that I feel comfortable, at this time, represents the total number of affected individuals,” she added.

The testimony came during the second hearing in two weeks by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into one of the largest and most serious cyber-attack’s in the government’s history. Federal officials familiar with the breach have said that hackers connected to the Chinese government are believed to be responsible for gaining access to forms recording personal information about people who apply for security clearances.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-24/u-s-hack-may-have-disclosed-18-million-social-security-numbers

[lindysalsagal]

1. I froze my credit with all 3 companies. Nothing else lets me sleep at night.

I also never use my debit online, I don't do electronic bill pay through my checking account, I never give out my ss# or type it into any keyboard: I call and have whoever put it in at their terminal, to minimize the access.

I don't bank online: If there's no online account, no one can hack it without going through my credit union.

I joined a credit union and the people in my local branch all know me on sight. I seldom use the account number for anything.

I pay everything I can with american express because their service is so good and the law protects us from outside abuse of the card.

Call me old fashioned, but I actually like opening bills and writing checks. It's much harder to get into my money because there are few access points.

And credit monitoring is useless: By the time you figure out something's wrong, it's already too late to do anything about it.

Just assume you're a target and act accordingly. Nothing else makes sense anymore.

BTW: If you want to learn how to freeze your credit, check out clark howard: It's all on his website. I did it snail mail, all registered and safe.l no online account there, either. When I want to thaw it, I call with my pin and the automated system allows me to thaw it for exactly the number of days I want and it automatically freezes again.

No one is opening a line of credit on my number.

Oh, yeah- and because I'm a fanatic, my score is 822. I'm just saying.

[Sunlei]

2. makes one wonder why China would want information on every person who works in gov jobs.

security jobs that is.

And why are there 18 MILLION "background investigations data" on American citizens in the first place?

Or perhaps China hacks for customers to sell their hacked information databases to.

Still wish our gov would set-up tasty information stings and grab whoever hacks and uses that information.
.