In December of 2023, National Public Data had a theft of 2.9 BILLION records of personal information (which included SSN, address, name, and phone numbers). You can see a cnet article on it here:
You can check if your number was in the breach (it probably was) at:
You need to insure that you freeze your credit and the credit of anyone you’re responsible for that has a social security number, even if you/they don’t use credit, because if you don’t, someone else can take out a loan in your name based on the information in this breach. Even my mother’s SSN was in the breach, so I had to go freeze her credit. Be sure you “freeze” your credit, not “lock” it, or sign up for some “identity theft” program (while those work, they cost a not-insignificant amount of money).
Freezing your credit is required by law to be free. This website:
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/how-to-freeze-credit
has an article that will walk you through doing the freeze at the 3 major credit bureaus either online or via telephone.A credit freeze makes it much harder for someone to take out a loan using your SSN because the loan company can’t get a credit report from the bureaus with the freeze in place (Of course, if the loan company will loan money without checking with one of the bureaus, that’s a whole different problem).
Good Luck
