About three billion of us may have had our personal data exposed in an April hack. As there are. There are just over eight billion people alive on the planet today.that means more than a third of the world’s population is affected.

As reported by Bloomberg Law.exposure is the fault of Jericho Pictures Inc., acting as background check company. National Public DataAccording to the lawsuit against the company. The lawsuit alleges that, on April 8 of this year, the hacking group USDoD uploaded a database, referred to simply as, “National Public Data,” to the dark web site Breach Forums. This 277GB database It is estimated to contain the information of 2.9 billion people. That data can be yours for $3.5 million.

National Public Data (the company, not the database) allegedly collects data on billions of us from “non-public” sources, unbeknownst to the people to whom the data relates. This data isn’t anonymous, either: it includes information like Social Security numbers, home addresses (both current and former), full legal names, and ancestry data that can easily be linked to you.

The lawsuit is brought by Christopher Hoffman, a California man who says he learned about the practice after his identity protection service alerted him to the data breach. Through the lawsuit, Hoffman wants a few things: a payment, National Public Data all the data it collected from affected customers, and for the company to implement changes to prevent it from happening again. That is, to protect data collected in the future. Encryption

It is unclear how National Public Data was able to obtain some of this information, particularly sensitive data such as Social Security numbers. Details of the breach have also not been confirmed: however, Bloomberg Law says that if confirmed, the breach would be the largest ever, surpassing the 2013 Yahoo! A breach that affected three billion people.

what can you do?

These situations are difficult, because the data in the breach was not stolen from a service you actively use. Thus, you cannot change the password or close the account. Instead, it may be better to hire a professional.

If you don’t already have one, consider signing up for a credit monitoring service. National public data. no Warning to affected users: Only a service that searches for stolen data online can tell you if your data, such as your Social Security number, was involved in the breach. From here, the service can guide you on how to proceed. PCMag, our sister site, is A list of the best identity theft protection servicesincluding: