Report: Almost Half Of American Adults Were Hacked In The Last Year

If you’ve felt like there hasn’t been a day in the last year without a warning of some new hack on big businesses and services you use and have had to change your passwords and keep an eye on your accounts as a result, you’re not alone — not by a long shot. A new report says about half of American adults were the victims of hackers in the last 12 months.

Hackers have dipped their fingers into the personal info of about 110 million Americans, reports CNNMoney, citing numbers from Ponemon Institute researchers. That all adds up to a total of 432 million accounts hacked, when taking into account all the various accounts held by the hacked.

It’s worth pointing out that saying exactly how many accounts have been hit by hackers is a tricky thing, and might not even be possible. That’s because many companies don’t want to fess up and reveal all the details of each breach.

But one thing we do know is that the hacks keep company, accessing names, addresses, email addresses, credit card information, phone numbers, passwords and basically anything you’ve got out there online.

It’s that very prevalence that presents a new danger, experts warn, from something called “data-breach fatigue.” It’s that feeling of “another day, another hack, shrug.”

Now is not the time to let your vigilance slip, however, because the hacks won’t stop. The more we move our lives online, the more open we are to villains seeking to crack the system. Keep your software updated for all apps and make sure you always change your password when a service you use has been hacked. Because saying it can’t happen to you just doesn’t make sense with odds like these.

(Photo credit: Pixteca | Len & Pix【ツ】)

Half of American adults hacked this year [CNNMoney]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist