The credit reporting agency Experian has been on the headlines on Aug. 21 after a data breach has been reported in its South Africa branch. After the incident, people suddenly heighten their security defense as well as left many people be concerned about their personal data while banks and financial institutions have advised users to be extra vigilant, despite Experian has already contained the breach. 

What to Do to Protect Your Information? 

In this case, it is best to know what to do to protect your information from a leak. Here are some useful tips.

Be vigilant 

Since the leak is not a direct attack on the account, you are not sure if it is hard to tell if your account is compromised in this massive breach. Thus, you must be vigilant.

Monitor transactions on your account like regularly checking statements and your credit score and adding security features payment notifications via SMS from your bank. If in case you find irregularities, report it immediately. This will make it easier to reverse and block the source of transactions. 

Change passwords immediately

Once a breach happens, the public will be advised to change their passwords if they are worried that their accounts are affected by the breach. 

While changing passwords should be done regularly, many passwords are weak and can be hacked easily, especially if these are old ones. Keeping a new password means it would be hard to access your accounts based on older information acquired in a leak. 

Meanwhile, it would help if you did not have a common password for all your accounts. It is best to have a combination of symbols, numbers, upper and lowercase letters in your password to achieve maximum protection. 

Register with the fraud prevention service

In case your passport or ID is stolen, it is recommended to register with the South African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS) to alert banking and financial institutions when your ID is used in any application. While this means you will need to go through a more stringent process, it is worth the extra work to ensure your ID is not illegally used.

Read also: How to Easily Password Protect a PDF from Data Breach

What happened before?

Experian South African branch had a data breach on Wednesday, Aug. 19 after an individual tricked the company by posing a legitimate client and got access to their users' private information. Experian said its security systems and database was not compromised. Tech Times reported that 24 million customers had been affected by the breach, and their information will be used in creating marketing leads for credit-related and insurance services.

Meanwhile, Experian assured that no credit-related or financial information was compromised in the breach as only personal information, which is being shared during an "ordinary course of business" is acquired by the perpetrator who has already been tracked by authorities.

The fraudster's hardware has also been impounded while the stolen data saved in the hardware has already been secured and deleted. Meanwhile, Experian Africa CEO Ferdie Pieterse has apologized to the affected customers for the inconvenience caused by the incident.

Read also: Experian South Africa Confirms Data Breach: 24 Million Customers Impacted 

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Written by CJ Robles

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