Half of American adults hacked this year
Hackers have exposed the personal information of 110 million Americans — roughly half of the nation’s adults — in the last 12 months alone.
That massive number, tallied for CNNMoney by Ponemon Institute researchers, is made even more mind-boggling by the amount of hacked accounts: up to 432 million.
The exact number of exposed accounts is hard to pin down, because some companies — such as AOL (AOL) and eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) — aren’t fully transparent about the details of their cyber breaches. But that’s the best estimate available with the data tracked by the Identity Theft Resource Center and CNNMoney’s own review of corporate disclosures.
The damage is real. Each record typically includes personal information, such as your name, debit or credit card, email, phone number, birthday, password, security questions and physical address.
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