Each time you buy something online, dozens and sometimes hundreds of companies access various pieces of your personal information. The purchase gets shared with your bank, the credit card processor like Visa or Mastercard, the retailer’s bank, the rewards program companies those banks use, email marketing software companies, and analytics databases.

What you buy often gets sold to advertisers and marketers to mine for research and to make new offers to you. A lot of that data ends up in the hands of data brokers who add you to various consumer marketing lists that they sell to all kinds of random businesses.

What are the risks of giving my personal information out?

If even one of these companies gets hacked, your personal information can end up on the dark web, which is where bad people can use it for identity theft, scams, spam, or hacking you or your family. The more places your personal information ends up in data breaches, the more likely these criminals will target you.

If you haven’t already, upgrade today to remove all the privacy risks found from your free scan within the app.