Can't follow my Data Breach score

Im a total Newbie here folks so please excuse my ignorance of BD and it's workings.

I subscribe to Total Security, VPN Premium and as of today Digital Identity Protection.

Possibly me, but I find most of BD pretty user-unfriendly, I have nonertheless persevered and am happy with the first two above that I have been using for over 12 months quite successfully.

I can kind of grasp the concept of the Digitel Identity program but after it did it's searches over my internet activities for many years following it's installation, it has come up on my Data Breach target with a miserable 5 out of a sought after 100 score, I guess that is not good!

Some of the breaches it has listed are well over 10+ years old and I don't have the vaguest idea what they were or when I even went to those sites.

BD happily lists about 23 breaches but only gives me the option to "Change Password" or report that I can't fix it via feedback. I can't see why I should have to dig up some ages old website whose login details I have long since forgotten just to change a password and then I guess sign out of that site! Obviously I'm missing something here, I did chat with a BD Agent who simply gave me a link to read uip on what the Identity thingo was all about, no help there!

I may be putting too much emphasis on the Data Breach score of 5 as above but as it is accompanied with a HIGH RISK warning I am fairly keen to learn how I can improve on this figure.

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks all!

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Alexandru_BD

Hello @Pilot787 and welcome to the Community!

First and foremost I would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for your loyalty and appreciation towards Bitdefender.

I will do my best to provide further clarification regarding the data breaches.

To find stolen data, we scan the dark corners of the web using various methods. Once the data is found, we use a proprietary system for identity resolution to discover the identity of the breached individual, so we can alert the person about the breach, even if the breach itself includes little or outdated information.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.

More information on Data Breaches can be found in our Cyberpedia article here:

https://www.bitdefender.com/cyberpedia/what-are-data-breaches/

It is important to know what to do if you are affected by a data breach and here's a list of recommendations to consider, that may also help improve your score in the future:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/28360/

I hope the information is helpful.

Regards

Scott

Hi @Pilot787

Don't feel too bad, my score is only 25...I still need to comb through things more :)

Some of the Data Breaches are so old as to not be resolved, including one I have from 1969 for Sanxter Collection. The only thing to do is go through the steps of "resolving" it to give it a green check mark. I wish once we "resolve" it, it would be deleted from that tab instead of pushed to the bottom. With most of them, I would have to create an account to delete my, that account information that doesn't exists? (see first link below) . I've disabled the email notification from that group, as at times, it can be a bit annoying in getting those notifications, at least for me, but that is up to you :)

Now, the Impersonation Check, I do leave that email notification on as I do find that one to be more concerning and relevant. Just make sure to check on things once in a while, as I do find Digital Identity Protection to be informative, especially with all the category tabs posted across the top. Go through Digital Footprint, and confirm or resolve all of those.

As far as Data Brokers, we manually need to go through that process, as the only way to have that be "easier", would be to pay for another vendors help, like Delete Me:

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/abine-deleteme

See if these posts, links also help:

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/321078#Comment_321078

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/313659#Comment_313659

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/320172#Comment_320172

Kind regards,

Scott