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December 28, 2017 - Whether or not you've ever heard of a company called Alteryx, you need to know that they've heard of you. In fact, they store a lot of data on you. We know that because they are behind the lasts massive data breach which included information on 123 million American households. For the record, according to the Census Bureau, there are only 126 million American households, so you have almost a 100% chance of being caught up in this data breach.
You may be asking, "How did a company that I've never heard of wind up with my information?" The short answer is that they purchased it. According to posting about the breach by LifeLock, the data appears to have been purchased from Experian; one of the nation's big three credit reporting agencies.
The exposed data contained 248 separate points of information for each individual household. Things like your address, mortgage data, financial history, etc… There is a pretty good chance that the Alteryx data included information about you that even you aren’t aware of. Oddly, the data file didn't contain names, but that doesn't provide any real protection. With your home address, finding out the names of the occupants is child's-play. The file contained everything else necessary to commit identity theft or fraud.
The breach was discovered in early October by a data security firm named Upguard. They notified Alteryx about the exposed file; which was secured earlier this month. Upguard then made their discovery public on December 19th.
The impact of this data breach is bound to be similar to the Equifax data breach earlier this year. We are now at a point that all consumers need to seriously consider freezing their credit files. This will not prevent all forms of identity theft but it will prevent anyone from opening new credit lines in your name. Additionally, consumes should diligently check their credit card invoices for fraudulent activity every month, and report any unauthorized charges immediately.
byJim Malmberg
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Identity Theft 
