Staying Safe Online: Do We Need A New Form Of ID?

Another day, another data breach–or so I thought. But even though there have been a lot of other really big data breaches over the past few years; hearing about the one perpetrated recently by a hacker called USDoD, gave me pause.  As reported by Bloomberg Law; it is possible they stole the Social Security numbers of every American, along with other personally sensitive information from a total of nearly 3 billion people in the US, UK, and Canada. This occurred in December 2023, when they cracked the defenses of National Public Data, which is a data broker offering personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies and others doing background checks.  With that in mind, along with the knowledge that in June 2023, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles warned about an identity theft scam using stolen driver's license information, I began to wonder; do we need some new form of identification?  To find out, I contacted Detective Troy Looney of the Akron Police Department's Financial Crimes Unit.  He is a subject matter expert in several Criminal Justice Field disciplines, such as Internet Investigations, Digital Forensics, Cybercrime, and Marketing, and has a doctorate in Organizational Management/Leadership, a Master of Science in Internet Marketing, and a Bachelor of Arts in Business/Marketing.  Looney is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Akron, teaching several courses in the College of Applied Sciences Department. Courses include Digital Forensics, Cybercrime, Digital and Scientific Evidence, File System Forensic Analysis, and Computer Forensic Methods II. Listen now.