March 23, 2017 - Imagine that you are out of a job and have been force to apply for unemployment assistance. As a part of that assistance, you're state provides - and may require you to use - a job search engine. And to use that search engine, you have to register and include your SSN, date of birth, etc… Now just imagine that all of that highly personal information has been hacked. That's precisely the predicament that 4.8 million American's located in ten states now face.

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America's Job Link Alliance is a company based in Topeka, KS. They provide a job search engine that matches employers with potential new hires. The company services unemployment departments in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Oklahoma and Vermont.

The company put out a news release that stated, "AJLA–TS confirmed that a malicious third party ‘hacker’ exploited vulnerability in the AJL application code to view the names, Social Security Numbers, and dates of birth of job seekers in the AJL systems of up to ten states." The company says that they have fixed the vulnerability that provided the hackers access.

It is important to note that not everyone filing for unemployment in the states mentioned is affected by this breach. Only those were registered to use the AJLA program.

Potential victims should read the company's news release with provides contact information for questions directed to the company, as well a Q and A about the data breach.

Anyone who becomes a victim of identity theft as a result of this breach is especially vulnerable because many employers require a credit check as a part of their hiring process. Since most of the victims of this breach are already unemployed, identity theft could make their current circumstances even worse by making them unemployable in their chosen field. The only way to ensure that this doesn't happen is to implement a credit freeze with each of the major credit reporting agencies; Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Anyone who is interested in initiating a credit freeze can contact the CRAs for the proper procedures for their state by calling the following phone numbers:

TransUnion: http://www.transunion.com/  and 800-680-7289.
Equifax: http://www.equifax.com/  and 800-685-1111.
Experian: http://www.experian.com/  and 888-397-3742.

byJim Malmberg

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