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Hackers have stolen your personal information in a data breach. Now what?

A plague of data breaches, exposing Social Security numbers, drivers license information and much more, has left millions of consumers more vulnerable to identity theft. (Eric1513/Dreamstime/TNS)
A plague of data breaches, exposing Social Security numbers, drivers license information and much more, has left millions of consumers more vulnerable to identity theft. (Eric1513/Dreamstime/TNS) A plague of data breaches, exposing Social Security numbers, drivers license information and much more, has left millions of consumers more vulnerable to identity theft. (Eric1513/Dreamstime/TNS)

By Mike Hughlett / The Minnesota Star Tribune (TNS) 7 min read

I almost threw away the mailing I got in mid-July from MNGI Digestive Health. I couldn’t remember ever patronizing the place. Must be more junk mail.

Then I remembered I’d recently written about MNGI and another Twin Cities medical firm, Consulting Radiologists. They had both been hacked, together exposing personal data of over 1 million people. Turns out I was one of them.

Like millions of Americans, I faced the specter of identity theft. So, I set out to discover more about this increasingly common scourge. I found useful tips — and sobering information about the market for stolen data.

Tracing identity theft to any particular data breach is difficult, said James Lee, chief operating officer of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit group based in California. “But we do know that data breach information is the fuel for most identity theft crimes.”

Through the first half of 2024, the Identity Theft Resource Center tracked 1,571 U.S. data breaches — 13% higher than the first six months of 2023, a year that ended with a record number of hacks. Over 1 billion people had their data compromised in breaches through June.