Data breaches are a common occurrence which is disturbing because they can readily lead to your identity being stolen or you becoming a victim of a scam as the hackers leverage the data they steal to lure you into a scam.  Prosper Marketplace, Inc is a peer to peer lending platform that enables people to borrow money directly from investors rather than go through traditional banks.  Prosper has been around since 2005 and facilitates loans of between $2,000 and $50,000.  Prosper recently disclosed that it had suffered a massive data breach affecting 17.6 million accounts.  Among the compromised data were names, birth dates, email addresses, Social Security numbers and more.  This information can readily lead to identity theft.  Prosper has indicated that it is still investigating the data breach, but will be offering free credit monitoring at a later date.

Companies must do a better job of protecting themselves from not just technologically sophisticated cyberattacks, but less sophisticated, but equally effective social engineering attacks where the cybercriminals use psychology to manipulate employees to giving them access to important data.

TIPS

Victims of this data breach should freeze their credit if they have not already done so.  Actually, freezing your credit is actually something everyone should do.  It is free and easy to do.  In addition, it protects you from someone using your identity to obtain loans or make large purchases even if they have your Social Security number.  If you have not already done so, put a credit freeze on your credit reports at all of the major credit reporting agencies.  Here are links to each of them with instructions about how to get a credit freeze:

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