Hackers access private info of 2.9 billion; possibly Social Security numbers of every American

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Social Security number of every American may have been stolen in a huge computer hack, and a Florida company is at the center of it.

The breach is apparently the work of a hacking group called USDOD. The group claims to have stolen the information from a Coral Gables, Florida-based company called National Public Data, which collects personal information for employer background checks.

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“The fact that someone could pull out anything in my name and get into everything, including my financial, my job, I mean my social security number is linked to everything. So that makes me super nervous,” consumer Chelsea Whitten told Action News Jax Thursday morning.

This marks just the latest massive cyberattack in what seems to be a troubling trend of major security breaches.

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“My husband just got something in the mail the other day that somebody had hacked his insurance company’s system,” Whitten said.

“With the advancement of AI technology, I’m not surprised that we see more and more of these,” University of North Florida School of Computing professor & director Zornitza Prodanoff said. “It’s a race, it’s a race between hackers and the companies on obtaining sophisticated enough tools and different layers of protections.”

However, Prodanoff added when it comes to companies keeping our data safe, they’d be better off outsourcing their cybersecurity, compared to handling it in-house, being able to give one extra layer of separation from hackers and our extremely sensitive data.

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