Soon you’ll be able to set up alerts from Google to get notified when your personal information gets shared on the dark web.
As the number of high-profile data breaches continues to grow, it’s getting harder to keep track of how widely your personal information is spreading on the dark web.
Google, though, is giving people a new line of defense. The company has announced it will offer free dark web monitoring to all consumer account holders starting at the end of this month. That will help consumers learn if details like their address, phone number, or email were found among data dumps that hackers sell or release via the dark web.
Google announced the decision to offer it free to all users.
To access the monitoring, once it goes live, you’ll simply head to Google “Results About You” page, which currently lets users sign up for alerts if their personal information appears in search results, giving them the opportunity to remove that information in some cases. The dark web monitoring will be added to that page’s features, alerting users via email or notifications on their smartphone.
Frankly, the dark web is not a place you’d want to visit. Hackers use it as a marketplace to, among other things, sell personal information taken from attacks on websites.While being aware that your personal information is on the dark web is useful, you’ll need to take action once you find out how to help protect yourself.
An alert that your data is on the dark web serves as a warning to change your passwords and freeze your credit to ward off possible identity theft.
Top 10 Reported Data Breaches of All Time
Starwood (Marriott) Data Breach
Date: November 2018
Number of records compromised: 500 million users
2. Facebook Data Breach
Date: April 2019
Number of records compromised: 533 million users
3. Ticketmaster Data Breach
Date: May 2024
Number of records compromised: 560 million users
4. LinkedIn Data Breach
Date: June 2021
Number of records compromised: 700 million users
5. Verifications.io Data Breach
Date: February 2019
Number of records compromised: 763 million users
6. First American Financial Corporation Data Breach
Date: May 2019
Number of records compromised: 885 million users
7. Alibaba Data Breach
Date: July 2022
Number of records compromised: 1.1 billion users
8. Aadhaar Data Breach
Date: March 2018
Number of records compromised: 1.1 billion users
9. Yahoo Data Breach
Date: 2017
Number of records compromised: 3 billion users
10. CAM4 Data Breach
Date: March 2020
Number of records compromised: 10.88 billion users
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