California's Attorney General Warns Personal Data Hacks Affected 18.5 Million Statewide Last Year
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS)— The number of Californians whose personal data was hacked last year jumped six-fold to 18.5 million accounts. That assessment comes from California Attorney General Kamala Harris in a new report on data breaches.
"In terms of the harm to consumers, nearly one in three data-breach victims in 2013 also became an identity-theft victim. So what does that mean? There was a breach of the data, someone infiltrated a data system. As a result of doing that and connected with that the individual whose information was then unauthorized, but shared, ended up becoming a victim of identity theft," Harris said.
There were a total of 167 different breaches in the state during 2013.
The alarming increase was partly due to breaches at Target stores and Living Social— an online marketplace.
Harris said California's consumers aren't changing their passwords often enough.
"Consumers should be changing their account numbers and passwords as often as possible," she said.
Harris added that retailers need to issue cards with chips and that health-care providers need to secure patient information, which is often on computers that are stolen.
"The health-care industry has been hit a lot. We've had many reports from dentist's offices or doctor's offices where after hours there's been a break-in and their laptops are stolen."
Harris said in many instances those laptops have not been encrypted.
A strong password should have mixed upper and lower case letters along with numbers.