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We examined how consumers’ data was affected after breaches in the following industries: social

media, travel, financial and healthcare.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND OVERSHARING OF DATA

Some of the most talked about breaches involve social media platforms or community based
mobile applications. The most notable compromised social media platform in 2018 was Facebook.

Impacted by multiple incidents, including the Cambridge Analytica data misuse, one significant
breach was caused by a vulnerability in coding that allowed hackers to access “tokens” for 50

million accounts. Tokens keep users logged in automatically, giving hackers the ability to view any
information users had in their profiles: name, employment information, relatives, phone numbers,

date of birth, etc. Users that utilized the Facebook authorization to log in to other platforms, like
Instagram and e-commerce sites, potentially allowed hackers access to those accounts as well.

Google+ was breached twice impacting 53 million users. A security bug allowed third-party

developers to access public user profile data since 2015. If a user gave permission to an app to
access their public profile data, the bug also let developers pull non-public profile fields for the user

and user’s friends including: full names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile photos, places
lived, occupation and relationship status. Quora (100 million users impacted) and MyFitnessPal (150

million users impacted) were also breached, allowing hackers access to usernames/emails and
passwords as well as personal fitness data in the case of MyFitnessPal.

The use of the same username/password or Facebook login credentials over multiple platforms

allows a single breach to impact many accounts. Hackers use the compromised data in an effort to
credential crack various platforms in order to gain more access to information. Unique usernames

and passwords as well as minimal sharing of personal data allows consumers to minimize their
risk of identity theft.

© IDENTITY THEFT RESOURCE CENTER 2019 | IDTHEFTCENTER.ORG
© IDENTITY THEFT RESOURCE CENTER 2019 | IDTHEFTCENTER.ORG