Mysterious data breach affects 80 million in United States
Recently cybersecurity researchers, Ran Locar and Noam Rotem of vpnMentor, discovered a database containing full mailing address, full names, ages, and dates of birth of people over 40 years old in the United States on a Microsoft cloud server. They also discovered coded references to gender, title, income, homeowner status, and marital status. The most shocking thing about this data breach though, is that researchers do not know who owns the database. Since the discovery of the breach, Microsoft reported they have communicated with the database owner and the database is no longer available.
This is unique and an oddity in the cybersecurity world to have a significant data breach with no known owner of the data. While some of this data is public record, not all of it is and when associated to names, addresses, and dates of birth, the data is very valuable to identity thieves. Some steps you can take is to put freezes on your credit, verify monthly financial and health statements, review all incoming mail for any new bills or statements.