I got the alert that my SSN was one of the 3 billion that had been hacked. This was from both Norton and LifeLock. I also called my bank and they said it was true and that if I turned off my credit Report then no one can use my ID. I put out the info to my Facebook friends and some of the groups I belong to. I am being laughed at and being challenged because there are not 3 billion people in the U.S. so I must have been scammed. I did see this on the news many times so I know it is a REAL problem. Please help me to answer the 350 million in the U.S. to 3 billion hacked difference. I don’t care if I look smart or stupid to my friends but I do not have an answer and now even I am wondering about it too. Thank You for your time.
My own guess is that it might be 3 billion pieces of information stolen from about a few hundred million people.
Name
SSN
address
phone
etc.
Another possible scenario…Your SSN is registered with multiple organizations/businesses and that counts as maybe 5 or 10 entries for you. Multiply that by the 350 million and that could add up to the multi billion reported.
SSA.gov says that 453.7M different SS#s have been issued since it started November 1936.
I wonder many people are in the National Public Data records with the same number? My cousin had her SS# misused back in the late 70’s and early 80’s when she found out several different field workers were using it. And I’d like to how my own info got into their database. Nobody told me they were sending it there. I just got an email from Norton yesterday that they’ve found my full name, full address including country, and a phone number on the dark web. I’ll assume my SS# wasn’t found nor my date of birth, but it’s possible it could make it there eventually since my bank was breached twice in the past 24 months and the SS# & DOB were included. And the bank didn’t tell their clients about it for 6 months after each incident!! Obviously, I left that bank.
Thank You !
Thank You for your time.
Thank You for your answer.