What South Africans can do to protect themselves after huge data leaks

[Bradley Prior]

What South Africans can do to protect themselves after huge data leaks

Effective privacy legislation is the best solution for targeting the rise of scams following significant data leaks, Orange Cyberdefense South Africa managing director Dominic White told MyBroadband.

 

[Willie Trombone]

"Those affected by either the Experian or TransUnion data leaks could sign up for the companies’ respective identity protection programs."

NO absolutely NO.
It was a week after signing up with TransUnion for the first time that my data was leaked. Coincidence?
I had two hits where people tried to use my details within a week of signing up for the TransUnion service.

 

[NeonNinja]

Lol how ironic? To protect yourself from the data leaks you have to sign up for something else! Lol

 

[Danie_V]

Problem is our marketing info has already been shared a long time, and it is out there. Just can't stop these daily calls for loans, insurance, phone contracts. In this regard I do regret moving from Android to iPhone, as all the call blockers like Truecaller are basically useless on iOS (the apps get force closed after a period, and can't integrate properly with the dialler).

 

[rvZA]

South Africans are being fooled. These companies are scraping the bottom of the barrel in ripping off consumers even more. Your information is out there in public hands more than 1,000 leaks, at least which include virtually all banks, insurance companies, SARS, Home Affairs, Natis, Telkom, Cellphone companies and much, much more. Live with it. Check your credit report once a year to see if some opened accounts fraudulently on your name and report it. Nothing else you can do to protect yourself. This is the reality of identity theft and data leaks.

 

[system32]

TransUnion has offered those affected by the March data leak a year’s access to its TrueIdentity product, allowing them to monitor identity-related threats.

No thank you.
In order to make use of TrueIdentity they ask for too much information - unrelated to ensuring your safe.

 

[j4ck455]

Rather than forcing South Africans to jump through hoops to try and protect themselves from impersonation attacks after a data leak or breach, White said there should be a more efficient approach.

“We’d probably have the most bang for our buck organising and putting pressure on legislators to not give credit bureaus a free pass in our privacy legislation,” White said.

Credit bureaus also sell the personal information that banks and companies in general give over to the credit bureaus.

If legislation is going to be changed to properly protect personal information, the legislation should state that only a one-way hash value of any data point should be shared, that way the credit bureaus can still hold and share one-way hashed data but they would not be able to monetise one-way hashed data.

ID numbers in particular should never be stored in plain text by credit bureaus, and if you have the ID number you can one-way hash the ID number and query for the one-way hash value, the same goes for account numbers, cellphone numbers, etc.

Eventually credit bureaus will cease to exist and credit checks will be done directly with financial institutions that have extended credit.

 

[netcruiser]

Phishing, not "vishing".

 

[Lord Flacko]

Problem is our marketing info has already been shared a long time, and it is out there. Just can't stop these daily calls for loans, insurance, phone contracts. In this regard I do regret moving from Android to iPhone, as all the call blockers like Truecaller are basically useless on iOS (the apps get force closed after a period, and can't integrate properly with the dialler).

It's so annoying. I get calls daily around car insurance, last call I asked how my details were acquired and the response was "Your details are stored in the national database for insurance".

I'm too young for this crap.