{"id":199446,"date":"2024-11-14T08:23:29","date_gmt":"2024-11-14T14:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/you-can-lock-your-social-security-number-after-a-data-breach-heres-how"},"modified":"2024-11-14T08:23:29","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T14:23:29","slug":"you-can-lock-your-social-security-number-after-a-data-breach-heres-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/you-can-lock-your-social-security-number-after-a-data-breach-heres-how","title":{"rendered":"You Can Lock Your Social Security Number After a Data Breach. Here\u2019s How"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/you-can-lock-your-social-security-number-after-a-data-breach-heres-how2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/personal-finance\/you-can-change-your-social-security-number-but-you-need-a-good-reason-to-what-to-know\/\" target=\"_self\">Social Security number<\/a> is essential for finding employment, filing taxes and applying for credit. It can also be a nightmare to recover if thieves get a hold of your SSN and use it to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/personal-finance\/its-not-a-real-job-its-an-employment-scam\/\" target=\"_self\">apply for jobs<\/a>, open accounts in your name and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/personal-finance\/taxes\/irs-warns-of-dangerous-new-tax-scam-involving-w-2-forms\/\" target=\"_self\">steal your tax refund<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Blocking electronic access to your SSN may feel extreme \u2014 it\u2019s certainly inconvenient. But if you\u2019ve been a victim of identity theft or your personal identifiable information was compromised in a recent data breach, like the hacks of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/personal-finance\/massive-change-healthcare-data-breach-impacted-100-million-people-what-to-know\/\" target=\"_self\">Change Healthcare<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/personal-finance\/identity-theft\/social-security-numbers-and-personal-data-of-billions-breached-in-national-public-data-cyber-attack-heres-what-you-need-to-know\/\" target=\"_self\">National Public Data<\/a>, where hundreds of millions of people were impacted, locking your SSN may protect you from future harm.<\/p>\n<p>Blocking access or \u201clocking\u201d your SSN will make it extremely difficult for an identity thief to use your SSN for malicious actions. This, coupled with a credit freeze, can help stop identity thieves in their tracks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your Social Security number is essential for finding employment, filing taxes and applying for credit. It can also be a nightmare to recover if thieves get a hold of your SSN and use it to apply for jobs, open accounts in your name and steal your tax refund. Blocking electronic access to your SSN may [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,1878],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybercrime-malcode","category-employment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}