Surfshark has unveiled a new identity theft protection tool to inform users when their personal information is circulating online. Surfshark Alert is the firm’s latest privacy offering and promises to detect traces of hacked personal information from more than 60 different data points.
Surfshark Alert will serve as an aggregator of compromised data, allowing individuals to see if information relating to their email accounts, passwords, credit cards, and even social media profiles, have been leaked.
The platform pools all the information into a unified repository and even informs users of data breaches affecting services that they no longer use (providing their personal data was involved).
- Here's our list of the best VPN services right now
- And here's our roundup of the best identity theft protection services
- We've built a list of the best endpoint protection services out there
Detecting data breaches
If Surfshark Alert does detect hacked personal data being shared online, users will receive a notification prompting them to take the necessary action. In many cases, passwords will need to be changed quickly, but monitoring bank account activity may also be required when financial information has been breached.
As Kaziukonis noted, the coronavirus pandemic has been accompanied by a marked increase in cyberattack activity. Interestingly, however, it appears that cyberattackers may not be receiving much financial reward for sharing victims’ personal data online. Recent research found that personal data sometimes trades hands on the dark web for as little as 50 cents.
"Some of the biggest data breaches in history were disclosed a couple of years after the data first appeared online. It is evident that some companies choose not to inform their users about leaks, or in some cases, they are not aware they have suffered a breach," Vytautas Kaziukonis, founder and CEO of Surfshark, said.
"Witnessing exponential growth in breaches and hacks due to the pandemic, we seek to empower privacy-minded people to oversee their digital presence better than ever before."
- Check out our list of the best antivirus services around
