A recent complaint claims that hackers allegedly stole personal information, including Social Security numbers, of many individuals.

Having access to such personal data, scammers possess the ability to effortlessly open bank accounts and submit loan applications by using the identities of their victims.

Christopher Hofmann, a Californian, sued because his identity theft protection service told him that his personal information was compromised in the "nationalpublicdata.com" hack and was available on the dark web. This complaint had been previously covered by Bloomberg Law.

According to recent reports, the notorious hacker group USDoD successfully acquired a vast amount of unencrypted personal data belonging to billions of individuals from the esteemed background check firm, National Public Data (NPD), in April 2024. A hacker recently released some stolen NPD data on a well-known hacking forum, according to the tech website Bleeping Computer.

According to Bleeping Computer, the hacker claimed that they had gained possession of a staggering 2.7 billion records. Each record supposedly contains crucial personal information such as full names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and phone numbers. Cliff Steinhauer, director of information security at The National Cybersecurity Alliance, warned that this breach could affect everyone with a Social Security number. However, the exact extent of the affected parties remains uncertain.