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Approximately 100 million Quora users might have had their account information compromised.
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Last week, Marriott announced that approximately 500 million people who made reservations at Starwood properties since 2014 have had their personal data compromised.
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Although there’s no real way to prevent your personal data from being compromised, there are ways to protect yourself if your data has been hacked.
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On Monday, Dec. 3, popular online Q&A platform Quora announced that user data had been compromised “as a result of unauthorized access to one of our systems by a malicious third party.” The data breach could have affected approximately 100 million site users, according to Quora’s release. Compromised information could include names, email addresses, passwords, data from linked networks, public content and actions on the site, and nonpublic content and actions, including answer requests and direct messages.
The Quora data breach comes on the heels of another massive data breach that compromised the personal information of up to 500 million guests who made a reservation at a Marriott Starwood property from 2014 on, the company disclosed last week.
“For approximately 327 million of these guests, the information includes some combination of name, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number, Starwood Preferred Guest account information, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure information, reservation date and communication preferences,” the official release for the Marriott data breach stated. “For some, the information also includes payment card numbers and payment card expiration dates.”
The information compromised during the breach could potentially be used to steal your identity and open credit cards, loans or bank accounts in your name, so you’ll want to know what you can do now to protect your identity.
Can You Realistically Prevent Your Data From Being Hacked?
Although there are steps you can take to protect your identity after a data breach, there’s not much you can really do to prevent it from being stolen in the first place given how our modern world operates.
“Sadly, I think that the only way to completely avoid the possibility of personal information being stolen is to live the life of a monk — 100 years ago,” said Morris Armstrong, a financial planner and licensed enrolled agent. “If you look at the recent Marriott data breach, the typical guest simply followed normal registration procedures and provided requested documentation. The hotels ask for a credit card to cover incidentals, and I cannot imagine what would happen if you said no.”