Dark Web Monitoring scans for your personal information on hard-to-find dark websites and forums. It is important because identity thieves can buy or sell your personal information to commit several illicit activities. We monitor and notify you if we see your sensitive personal information on file-sharing networks intended for music or photos.
As part of our service, we scan the surface, deep, and dark web for exposure of information. When you subscribe, it defaults to monitor your email address, and we run a one-time historical dark web scan looking back to 2008 to determine if the information you provided us has been previously exposed. If we find exposed information, we notify you. We run continuous scans and are on the lookout for exposed information.
When we detect your information on the dark web, we notify you to gain awareness and act. To review the alert or notification that you received, go to your account dashboard or mobile app. If your information has been exposed, you can be proactive and take several actions to help protect yourself.
For some alerts, we ask you for a confirmation of the activity or transaction so we can determine if there might have been the possibility of an identity theft incident. For other notifications, such as Dark Web Monitoring, we are notifying you that information that may belong to you has been detected. These notifications do not require a confirmation from you because it is a result of a scan we perform on your behalf and not a result of your activity.
There could be several reasons why you may not recognize the website mentioned in a notification. Here are a few reasons:
- The account may have been created via Facebook or Google login. Some accounts may be old, and you may not remember having used the website or service.
- You may have provided login details (username/password) for one-time use, after which you may have never gone back to the website or account again.
- Sometimes breached sites or services may deactivate exposed accounts which can make it difficult to remember or identify an account as belonging to you.
Even if you don’t recognize the password shown in the alert, we recommend that you change the password associated with the affected website or any other site where you've used the same password.