Data Protection Wednesday: Guarding Your Data in the Age of AI: Lessons from My Personal Data Breach Journey!

Data Protection Wednesday: Guarding Your Data in the Age of AI - Lessons from My Personal Data Breach Journey!

Join me on a candid journey as I share personal experiences of data breaches in the era of artificial intelligence (AI). Discover practical insights and conversational tips to effectively safeguard your valuable data. Let's navigate the evolving landscape together and ensure the protection of our digital lives.

Sabine, the host and producer of the "Selling with Sabine" podcast, is a consumer to business sales expert with a wealth of experience in Fortune 150 tech companies, including telecommunications and cybersecurity. She holds an Adult Learning Graduate certificate and utilizes her Instructional Design Graduate program knowledge to design and develop sales training assets such as job aids, micro e-learning  e-courses for her clients.

Transcript:

Welcome to Selling with Sabine. I am your host, Sabine Taylor. On this show, I usually discuss sales-related topics. However, today I want to shift gears and talk about the importance of security and AI, also known as artificial intelligence. It's a crucial topic because many people are taking advantage of these tools, and it's essential to have a serious conversation about the safeguards that should be in place to protect ourselves. So, stay tuned.

Let me take you back to 2012 when I received a message from my bank on a Sunday asking me to call them back. Initially, I assumed it was a sales call, so I ignored it. However, they kept calling me, and for three days, I kept ignoring them. But I finally decided to call back on a Thursday. That's when I learned that someone had obtained and duplicated my bank card number. Being in the tech industry, I was familiar with fraudsters, so to prevent my information from being stolen online, I never used my bank card for online purchases. However, I realized that the incident might have occurred when I handed my card to a waitress at a restaurant who possibly made a copy when she went to pick up my food in the kitchen. And around the same time this happened, I learned that an employee at a company that I used to work for had been under surveillance for three months, and she had used a similar method. So, this helped me understand how my data was breached.

Several years later, I was contacted by a hospital security official to discuss a data breach that had occurred. Someone apparently used my credentials to see an OBGYN. Because of this, I signed up for all types of monitoring services. With this in mind, I started to become very curious as to why all of these events were happening to my data. In my research, I learned of a role at a cybersecurity company, and after applying in 2016, I was extended an offer as a sales training specialist, teaching other sales reps how to sell cybersecurity products. In this role, staying updated on trends was crucial. This involved reading threat reports and gaining access to all of this information made me greatly aware of cyber threats. As a result, I started implementing the advice I had been training my reps on, such as changing my password frequently. Taking these proactive measures to protect my data instilled a stronger sense of security in me.

Fast forward to the first quarter of 2023, I began receiving multiple email and text alerts notifying me that my data had been discovered on the dark web. In case you're not familiar, the dark web refers to obscure websites operated by cybercriminals who sell stolen user information. These websites have a short lifespan as threat detectives actively seek to shut them down. Consequently, these cybercriminals aim to maximize their profits by selling usernames, passwords, and social security numbers from prices ranging from $5 to $50 before their websites are taken offline. So, as I pondered my online activities, it became apparent that the increasing alerts were a result of signing up for multiple AI accounts. So, I am not going to name the platforms that I use because I cannot say 100% for sure that the discovery of my data on the dark web is tied to them. But what I can tell you is that in the first quarter of 2023, I signed up for many AI accounts, and at the same time, I'm receiving these alerts. So that's how I'm putting two and two together, and I'm pretty sure that one is related to the other.

Now, I started to do some online research to stay informed about cyber threats and AI platforms. And what I discovered was quite worrisome—the risks involved with cyber threats are very high on these platforms.

Also, since many of these sites are free, I wonder what money do they have to pay for a security team to monitor the traffic on their sites 24/7 days a week. From my knowledge in this field, when an app developer provides a user a service for free, it is in many cases to get the user to accept the terms of service. Then, once they have our permission, they will sell our data to a third-party company. That third-party company then makes more money by reselling the data they just obtained from these apps. So, the big issue is... is that if we download the wrong app, our data could end up on the dark web.

Realizing the potential dangers, I took proactive measures to safeguard my information. I decided to freeze my credit at all three credit bureaus, requested my bank to issue new credit cards, and informed all relevant financial institutions about the data breaches involving my stolen data. While these tasks did take some time to complete, I wanted to avoid a situation similar to what I went through back in 2012, where I had to take time off work to deal with the administrative tasks related to a data breach.

So, what does my story mean for you? Well, it's important to understand that there's a whole lot of sensitive data floating around on AI platforms. These tools are great for making things more efficient, but they also come with a higher chance of data breaches. If you're thinking about sharing your private info like email addresses and passwords on these platforms, it's crucial to think about getting an identity monitoring service. Trust me, you do not want your information falling into the wrong hands and ending up on the dark web. It is simply better to be proactive.

With that said, it's time to wrap up today. I appreciate the time we've spent together, and I hope you found value in this episode. If you could help me reach a wider audience, I would be so grateful. So consider following this show and liking this episode. You can also find me on LinkedIn by typing my name, Sabine Taylor, where my name is spelled out as "S" like success, "a" like achievement, "B" like beautiful, "I" like intelligent, "n" like nice, and "e" like excellence. In the search results, you should find Sabine Taylor The Sales Training Architect. Once on my LinkedIn profile, scroll down to the featured section to access resources like my 5-Step ChatGPT Sales Coaching Prompt Generator Template for sales supervisors and several short videos on sales tips. Also, you can message me on LinkedIn for your business-to-consumer Sales Enablement training request. So, that's it for now. Have a wonderful day, everyone. Bye-bye.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thesalestrainingarchitect/