The dreaded data breach notification... It tells you your personal data's been compromised and suggests steps you can take to minimize the potential harm. On today's episode, Kenny Malone pulls out a data breach letter he received and goes over what it recommends with Amanda Aronczyk. Amanda recently did a show about the legal and illegal markets for data and tells us how useful these steps actually are. It's news you can use to protect yourself, whether or not you've been part of a data breach!This normally would be a bonus episode just for Planet Money+ listeners. With this being the season of giving, we're sharing this one with everyone! To hear more bonus content like this, regular episodes sponsor-free, and support the work of NPR, sign up for Planet Money+ at plus.npr.org. Related links:Data Breach Response: A Guide for Business (FTC)Have you been affected by a data breach? (FTC)Your Technology Is Tracking You. Take These Steps For Better Online Privacy (Life Kit)What happens after you get scammed? Can you get your money back? (Planet Money)Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons (cybersecurity and privacy podcast) DeleteMe (personal data removal service) Experian (credit bureau)TransUnion (credit bureau) Equifax (credit bureau) Always free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the purpose of this bonus episode?
This is Planet Money from NPR. Hello, I am Kenny Malone. And I'm Amanda Aronchik. And we are here because, of course, the season of giving is upon us, the spirit of giving. And in that spirit, Amanda, we at Planet Money would like to share with everyone a sample of what our bonus content sounds like. So usually what you're about to hear, it's just for our Planet Money Plus supporters.
But today we're making this bonus episode available to everyone, to all.
Yes. These episodes come out every two weeks. You know, basically our bonus episodes, they might be extended cuts of interviews. They might be interviews that come from our newsletter. We might talk about how an episode was made. Occasionally we do a movie club where we talk about economics and a film. Kenny, I understand that you are going to do that again soon. Love it.
Oh, yeah. Christmas at the alpaca farm.
Is that really the movie? Yeah.
There is a lot of economics in this. The economics of how Christmas rom-coms get made, the economics of the fiber markets. And the more I say it, I know the more it sounds like it is a joke. It's not a joke. Sounds delightful and seasonal, honestly. Anyway, sometimes we watch movies and we talk about them on the bonus feed.
But then sometimes we're also just working on an episode of the show and there's extra material that didn't fit in and we want to share it. And that is what we're here to do today in this bonus episode. So, Amanda. Yes. You recently did an episode, a whole episode on what happens when your personal data gets stolen.
And you had a bunch of extra reporting on it that I have been begging you to tell me about personally.
Yes, that's true. And for the season of giving, I come bearing news you can use. It's whatever. It fits in a stocking. Yeah, you wrap it up, you put that under the tree, put it in the stocking. This is advice on what you can do to protect your personal information if you've been part of a data breach. Even if you have not been part of a data breach, some of this will be news that you can use.
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Chapter 2: What should I do if I receive a data breach letter?
Okay. So not BS. Get your free credit report. Great. Thing number two. Yeah. Enroll in credit and identity monitoring services. Okay. So I've never done this before, but presumably –
This is a service that just – that I guess this company that got hacked is now providing me for free to just like keep an eye on whether someone is going – is taking out like a line of credit in my name or something like that.
Yeah, this is a funny one. Some states actually require that they offer you free credit monitoring if you've been involved in a data breach. But again, it depends on the state and also the personal data involved. There is actually an academic paper from 2012 that says if they offer you this service, this free credit monitoring, it's going to reduce the likelihood that you sue them by a lot. Yeah.
Yeah. What will often happen is you'll get this letter and it'll say in there that they've made some sort of arrangement with another company and that company will offer you free credit monitoring, which is basically a report. It's not your credit report. It's like a report that comes to your inbox or you can have it mailed to you. And it's going to say like, hey, you know, we were watching this.
We saw some suspicious activity here. We saw this email used here. Somebody pinged us about this. I have been doing it for years with Experian. And that one's actually pretty detailed.
Was that after the hack you did it?
Yeah. And I will admit that like I've gotten this offer so many times. I don't pay that close attention to it. Maybe.
To like the emails they send you or whatever.
To the emails that they send me. It's not not useful. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How can I protect my personal information after a data breach?
So you want to protect that.
Yes, you definitely want to be protecting your email because, yes, because chances are too at some point you've emailed a password to somebody and it's sitting there in your email. It's a lot of personal information in your email. And the password manager thing, I have very mixed feelings about. I'm using Google Chrome password manager. It's fine. It's sort of out of laziness.
I have not done the best and brightest research on this. I have not done a ton of research on this. But we are offered a password manager at work. I have not taken it partly because I think of password managers as centralized tools. Repositories of data. And they get hacked, too. It is a centralized repository of all your passwords. They get hacked, too.
So they are being extra super duper careful.
Theoretically, your passwords are encrypted in some way.
Yeah, but being all in one place makes me nervous. But I think for the most part, people in this field or in this area will say to you, yeah, that's a good idea because it'll help you have strong passwords.
It's choosing – what's clear is you're choosing which risk you want to take here.
Yeah.
Like that is all that exists in this horrible dystopia that we've created for ourselves in the data world.
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