Protecting your personal information

In the last three years it feels like there have been major data breaches every few months, and Central Queensland has been no exception to this trend.  In addition to the large breaches which have affected millions of people nationally, we’ve seen breaches with local effects in industry, local government, and even services provided by charitable organisations.  Cyber criminals don’t discriminate by location or the field in which we work, they mostly go after targets which have money (and not necessarily a lot of it).

One of the most significant threats of all these data breaches is the potential for what is called “data aggregation”, that is the picture of your personal life which can be developed by looking at all the available information together.  Any individual breach might not have huge consequences (although many do!), but the fact that we almost always use the same email address to access various accounts and services provides a clear point of reference which can be used to link them all together.  ABC News put together an excellent article describing this earlier this year, and I encourage anyone to both read the article and use the tool included to see a short list of what data of yours has been exposed.

It's hard to do anything about the leaking of personal information.  Once it’s out there, there’s no making it secret again.  Some things, like account numbers and licence numbers, can be changed and ideally should if they have been publicly disclosed in a breach.  But we cannot change things like our date of birth, or a list of addresses where we have previously lived.  There are some steps we can take to prevent our data from being used against our best interests.  The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has advice on how you can place a temporary ban on the use of credit reporting with your information in it.  Credit reports are regularly a first step in monetising personal information, as a criminal may well attempt to take out a loan or purchase products on credit with your information.

CQ Cyber is here to help keep Central Queenslanders safe.  Please get in touch via our website if you would like assistance, or just want to know what it is that CQ Cyber can do for you.  If you have requests or ideas for informational posts like this, please let us know!

References:

ABC News – See your identity pieced together from stolen data: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-18/data-breaches-your-identity-interactive/102175688

OAIC – Fraud and your credit report: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/credit-reporting/fraud-and-your-credit-report