A startling revelation this week showed the scale and severity of data breaches and the criminals behind them.
As shown in this report, a dark web marketplace has surfaced and was found to be selling 153 million North American driver’s licenses.
These IDs also include the infrared captures used to verify documents by banks and government agencies, meaning the stolen cards could be sold and used to facilitate identity theft.
Facts About the Breach and How to Protect Yourself
The database was discovered to contain information and identifying documents from both United States and Canadian residents. Traditional driver’s licenses weren’t the only ones available. Commercial driver’s licenses were also listed, as were Common Access Cards, which are used to access DOD networks and protected government buildings.
Some who had discovered their own IDs in the database, known as Nexus, traced the timestamps associated with them. They aligned with instances where these individuals had presented their IDs for security purposes, showing that seemingly innocent and official methods of using IDs could’ve provided the opportunity data thieves needed to steal and upload credentials.
This threat creates a unique level of risk. While replacement driver’s licenses can give the real owner a new number, the original is stored in databases like banks and government agencies where it was originally registered. This, coupled with the infrared captures, can allow fraudsters to open new lines of credit, communicate with government agencies, and generate “official” documents, all in the name of the person whose ID they stole.
How should you respond if you are at risk? Freeze your credit with all three credit bureaus, and set up fraud alerts. You should also monitor government accounts, like those associated with the DMV, IRS, and SSA. While the FBI is currently investigating the breach, the database has gone dark, so there’s no way to search if your ID was compromised. Remember to treat any outreach about the issue as a potential scam itself, as fraudsters can use the panic to fuel scams just as easily as they can use the IDs.