How many people have been hacked?
So much information has been stolen by hackers that virtually everyone in the U.S. has been affected by a data breach in some way—even those who never go online. The recent data breach at Equifax, one of the three major credit reporting agencies, exposed the personal information of more than 145 million Americans, including Social Security numbers, driver’s license data, birth dates, and addresses. As many as 75 percent of U.S. adults with a credit score may have been victimized. While the Equifax attack was particularly damaging, it was hardly unique. Hackers exposed the personal information of 110 million people in 2013 and 2014, nearly half the nation’s adults. In those years, more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen in a single attack against Target. Yahoo had all 3 billion of its accounts hacked. “It’s a safe assumption that everyone’s Social Security number has been compromised and their identity data has been stolen,” said Jeremiah Grossman, the chief of security strategy at the cybersecurity firm SentinelOne. “While it may not be explicitly true, we have to operate under that assumption now.”