Some Key Data Breaches of 2022 and Why You Should Care.

The average person has no idea about the data breaches that occurred in 2022 and how many occur over a year’s time. Here’s some information about network attacks that will open your eyes and cause some concerns.

The number of reported data breaches in 2022 were approximately 4,100. Most likely, that number will go up as data breaches are previously unknown attacks and are discovered and reported in the months to come.

Here’s why you need to care about data breaches.

Chances are you don’t pay much attention to data breaches when you hear about them, and that’s if you even hear about one.  In fact, data breaches aren’t on the radar of most people.  But you need to be aware of data breaches:

Here’s why:

1. You may have accounts and do business with a company whose network was compromised.
2. Information stolen in a breach often includes data that can be used in identity theft.
3. Email addresses are often stolen in data breaches; email addresses are the gateway to OTHER accounts you have linked using the same email address.

The scary truth is quite simple—The effect of a data breach from 2022, whether large or small—commonly trickle down to account holders. Worst of all, you may not even know about it till it’s too late.

Let’s take a look at some surprising data breaches in 2022. (Did you know about any of these?)

VPNs are supposed to be safe. ChatVPN, SuperVPN, GeckoVPN suffered breaches.

A virtual private network is supposed boost a user’s online privacy and security. How disheartening to hear that three VPNs  suffered a data breach that affected 21 million users. The information leaked was substantial, including usernames, billing details email addresses and more.

A network attack isn’t a game to cybercriminals: The Neopets breach.

Neopets is a very popular digital game where players can own a virtual pet and buy virtual things for them with real money or the virtual currency called neocash. Shockingly, attackers breached the game network and silently had access to their data for a year and a half.

The data of 69 million uses was uploaded and made available for sale. It included names, email addresses, dates of birth and more.

Leading platforms have weak security: Twitter Data Breach

You would think—and hope—that the largest and most popular platforms would have the best IT people and security to protect their networks. That’s not the case. In November 2022, Twitter announced they’d suffered a data breach that affected 5.4 million of their accountholders. That information was being offered up for free on a hacker forum.

Later, it came out that earlier there may have been a totally different breach affecting 1.4 million former accountholders. In the middle of the year, Twitter’s former head of security went public with a statement citing Twitter’s cybersecurity having “egregious deficiencies, negligence and willful ignorance.”

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Not admitting their failings: Uber Data Breach

Once again, a business that operates primarily online came up short when it came to cybersecurity and tried to cover it up. In 2002, Uber settled a suit with the U.S. government by admitting to covering up a data breach a few years earlier.

To make matters worse, a former cybersecurity exec was convicted in October 2022 of obstruction of justice. To top off the year, Uber suffered another data breach in December, when a thief hacked the network of an Uber vendor, and found a data valuable company data there, including.

Misplacing their trust: The DoorDash Breach.

In August, food delivery giant DoorDash confirmed a data breach 4.9 million customers, workers and merchants that exposed personal information. In a blog post, the company, a third-party vendor, was the target of a sophisticated phishing campaign and certain personal information maintained by DoorDash was affected.

DoorDash said the attackers accessed the names, email addresses, delivery addresses and phone numbers of DoorDash customers. For a “smaller subset” of users, hackers accessed partial payment card information, including card type and the last four digits of the card number.

New year’s preview.

In the past few years, and especially during the pandemic, apps that made life simpler and convenient jumped in popularity. Most vendors paid more attention to service than security, hiring vendors quickly to help handle the new volume. Hackers paid attention and can get to their targets through a third-party.

Companies may care about getting your business, but they care less about your security. Make no mistake about it, hackers will continue to breach networks and steal data. How much of the information they steal, sell or use will come from you and put your accounts and identity at risk?

You have to protect your accounts and interests.

Here’s an idea for the new year.

• Pay attention to the news whenever you hear of a massive or significant data breach.
• Learn more about the need to be aware of the dangers of data breaches. We wrote an article earlier on exactly that topic—why you should care about a data breach. You can read it here.
• Use the free Data Breach Check tool you’ll find at WhatIsMyIPAddress.com. It’s the quickest get a snapshot of potential dangers.

Do a data breach check.

A data breach check will tell you if your email address appears in a database of known data breaches. From there, you can make important changes, such as changing your account email and/or changing your passwords and more.