Is YOUR data for sale on the dark web? Here’s how to check if you’ve been affected

It’s a scary realization, but your digital identity could be up for grabs for the highest bidder on the dark web.

According to a report by the Digital Shadows Photon Research team, up to 25 billion phone numbers, email addresses, credit card information and credentials were for sale last year.Account takeover in 2022.’

Bad actors can buy goods with your bank account, receive medical care through your health insurance and even commit crimes under your name.

While you cannot remove your information from the dark web, you can tell if it is on the black market.

Cybersecurity experts recommend using scanners and websites that search the dark web on your behalf.

Users can go to websites like ID Security and Have I Been Pwned that use your email address or phone number to see if you’re on the dark web.

Password managers like LastPass and Apple’s Keychain show you if your passwords have been compromised or overused by scouring the black market and alerting users how common their passwords are.

The dark web is one of the three layers of the internet – the other two are the surface and deep web.

Unlike the worldwide web, the dark web is not accessible through search engines.

Users need an anonymous browser called Tor – short for The Onion Router – a seething array of encrypted websites that allow users to surf the everyday internet in complete anonymity.

It uses numerous layers of security and encryption to make users anonymous online, giving users access to a lawless land where child pornography, human trafficking, assassins and other illegal goods are easily accessible.

And it’s the place to buy and sell people’s personal information.

According to a report by the Digital Shadows Photon Research team, by 2022, about 6.7 billion of the offers on the dark web “had a unique username and password combination, indicating that the combination was not duplicated in databases.

This data was collected through data breaches from large organizations, such as demand banks, medical institutions, and credit card companies.

HaveIBeenPwned is a way to check if your information might have been collected during a hack.

This website contains over 11 billion stolen records

Scott Shackelford, director of Indiana University’s cybersecurity program, shared this CBSTo: “Just enter your email address and it shows how many times that email account has surfaced in breaches and how many times it has appeared on the dark web, for example.”

There is also the option to pay for a dark web monitor, which continuously scans the dark web for your data, such as Aura, LifeLock and ID Watchdog.

Most of these services cost an average of $10 per month.

However, due to criminal activity, dark web scanners cannot cover all stolen data across the entire dark web.

This is because most stolen data is traded privately.

Password managers also monitor the dark layer of the internet, sending users alerts if their credentials have been compromised.

Apple’s keychain encrypts account names and passwords for your Mac, apps, servers, and websites, and confidential information, such as credit card numbers or bank account PINs.

When you access a website, email account, network server, or any other password-protected item, you can store the password in your keychain so you don’t have to remember or enter it every time.

And it also prevents it from being seen online by prying eyes, but notifies you if your passwords have been compromised.

“For example, when you first log in, it says 25 times that this information has appeared in breaches, and that might prompt you to be a little more proactive and change those passwords,” Shackelford told CBS.

Users daring enough to venture onto the dark web to search for their own information can do so by downloading Tor.

“Unlike, say, ‘dot com’, these all end in ‘dot onion’ because it’s a different type of protocol to get you there,” Shackelford said.

The birth of the dark web around 2000 with the release of Freenet, a graduation project by Edinburgh University student Ian Clarke who wanted to create a ‘Distributed Decentralized Information Storage and Retrieval System’.

Clarke wanted to create a new way to communicate anonymously and share files online, which was the basis for the Tor project, released in 2002.

The US Navy has developed ‘dot onion’ to avoid detection and surveillance while operating online.

However, navigating Tor is really only possible for seasoned dark web users.

“You don’t actually go to web domains like ‘criminal-dot-onion’ or anything like that,” Shackelford said.

“They’re all anonymized, so they’re all strings of numbers and letters, so it’s actually kind of hard to find a lot of them.”