LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (AP) - Users Personal information about more than 18.5 million Californians was compromised previous year and as many as one-third of those people will become victims of fraud, California Attorney General Kamala Harris said Tuesday in a new brief report on data hacked in the nation's biggest state. Retailers, banks, health care providers and other organizations reported 167 different breaches in the state during 2013.
That's six times more than the 2.5 million accounts hacked in 131 breaches in 2012, and represents nearly half of the state's 38 million residents.
The alarming increase in malicious hacking and accidental leaks due to poor information security was mainly due to breaches at Target stores and Living Social, an online marketplace. Even without those two incidents, the number of customer accounts exposed by other hacks jumped 35 percent last year. As many as one third of people whose information is exposed in a data breach will subsequently suffer some kind of fraud, Harris adds in the report, citing estimates by Javelin Strategy and Research, a California firm that tracks financial industry trends.
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