Australia: How to find out if you are involved in an unpublicized data breach

Personal details of millions of Australians have been compromised in breaches lately. In fact, in the last quarter of 2022, Australia suffered more data breaches than any other country in the world.

In total, 497 data breaches hit Australians in the second half of 2022, mostly in the health and finance sectors. 40 were large-scale breaches. That counts for a 67% rise in the number of attacks from the first half of the year, which only saw 24 large-scale attacks.

While the Optus, Medibank hacks, and other breaches made headlines, some were never publicized, as The Australian Information Commissioner revealed.

Why?

Australia’s current data breach laws give no specific time frame for agencies or organizations to report that they have been hacked. A new proposal by the federal Attorney-General’s department, if approved, would give them 72 hours.

Since watching the news for recently disclosed data breaches doesn’t always work, you should look out for yourself. The sooner you find out, the better. Exposure of your personal information increases the likelihood of other attacks, such as targeted social engineering, impersonation fraud, digital identity theft and scams.

According to Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Australians lost a record $424.8 million to email and SMS scams from January to September 2022 (up a massive 90% over the same time the previous year).

Are you involved in an unpublicized data breach?

With Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection, you can instantly check if your data has been leaked in a recent (or old) breach, what type of information was exposed, and how risky this is for you.

Bitdefender Digital identity Protection scours the Internet (and the Dark web) for bits of information and tracks them back to your identity; it also checks for leaked passwords. So not only can you see your digital footprint at a glance, but you also get recommended steps to take for each account involved in a data breach.

Try it today and discover the breaches nobody tells you about!