What EXACTLY does this do?

S Fraser

I think I'm missing something here. I purchased this product as I wanted to know what my digital footprint is and whether I'm being impersonated. I've put in 8 emails that I use and 3 different phone numbers, and obviously my name.

All the Digital Footprint tab shows are the email companies that contain the email I've entered. The Impersonation Check tab has found absolutely nothing - despite me being on social media. It hasn't actually found my real accounts never mind any impersonators.

I've looked at various videos (including the Bitdefender ones) and can't understand why what I'm seeing is so different. I have literally 100's on online shopping accounts, forums etc but none of them have appeared. Why? Have I bought the wrong product, or version of product?

So I am wondering what EXACTLY I'm paying for?

Alexandru_BD

Hello @S Fraser,

Here's how Impersonation protection actually works: when DIP encounters a profile (usually from social networks) that has common elements with your identity but has not been confirmed to be yours, it will alert you about the possibility that a profile belonging to someone else is attempting to impersonate you. The service will also display suggestions for actions to be taken in case it is indeed an impersonation attempt.

If DIP doesn't find your real social media accounts, then there could be a problem there. To investigate further, I would suggest contacting the Support teams and maybe restart the onboarding process.

To get a better understanding of how Digital Identity Protection actually works and what's included, you can check this article:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/32463/

One thing worth mentioning about data breaches: to find stolen data, it scans the dark corners of the web using various methods. Once the data is found, it uses a proprietary system for identity resolution to discover the identity of the breached individual, so it can alert the person about the breach, even if the breach itself includes little or outdated information.

Most commonly, breaches include information about users’ emails, passwords, names and usernames, phone numbers, and physical addresses. Their exposed data creates a snowball effect that ultimately leads to the leak, sale, or trade of entire digital identities on the Dark Web. Breaches are not necessary found on a specific website.

They are in a compilation of usernames, passwords, phone numbers, etc. found in archives or texts on the Dark Web, in general.

The Digital Identity Protection service raises awareness about your Digital Footprint (data exposed in Surface Web) and remediation steps for data breaches (data exposed in Dark Web). However, you would not be able to change the username for a specific website, but you will be informed that in that specific period, data about you has appeared in data lists on the dark web.

This means that you could become victim of a scam. As the purpose is to raise awareness of these breaches and the data involved can be various, there are no mitigation steps for the situation. If the breach was about a password, you could have changed it, but the breach can also involve other types of data, such as phone numers, address, etc. And if these are listed somewhere on the dark corners of the web, there is no possible way to retrieve or delete them from there, because you don't have control over that leaked information.

I hope the information is helpful.

Regards,

Alex