What a data breach actually means for you

Which kind of data

• Email + password: urgent if you reuse passwords — criminals will try that pair on your email, bank, and shopping accounts within days.
• Social Security number: the long game — new accounts and tax fraud months or years later. This is the freeze-your-credit one.
• Card number: annoying but contained — banks eat fraudulent charges; you get a new card.
• Address, phone, birthday: fuel for convincing, personalized scam calls and texts. Expect them, and be suspicious of "coincidences."

The order to respond in

1. Change the breached password anywhere you used it — email first.
2. Turn on two-step sign-in for email and bank.
3. If SSN was involved: freeze your credit at all three bureaus.
4. Watch statements, and treat calls that "know things about you" with double suspicion.

Our free check shows which leaks your email is already in — run it here.