Credit Karma Will Now Scan The Dark Web For Customers

Credit Karma, the company that provides consumers with their credit score and a free identity monitoring tool for users, is expanding its offering to include data from the Dark Web.

TechCrunch reported that with the expanding scanning capabilities, Credit Karma will not only be able to scan 4.5 billion breaches for personal data of users but also scan data from the Dark Web.

“The problem is pervasive, and the data set that we have is relatively comprehensive,” Anish Acharya, Credit Karma’s VP of Data Products, said in an interview with TechCrunch. Credit Karma hooked up with SpyCloud, a security firm, for its databases. Users who pop up in scans will get an alert so they can get more information and lock down their account if necessary. They can even look at which passwords were compromised so they know which password to change.

According to TechCrunch, Credit Karma said that 65 percent of its users have experienced a data breach whether or not they are aware of it. With this and other new tools, Credit Karma told TechCrunch that it wants users to worry less about identity theft.

“The goal is actually decreasing fear and anxiety by empowering consumers,” Acharya said. “It’s a very scary conversation … it’s not a conversation you’re having with friends over a beer — [not] today at least.”

The black market took a hit in July when law enforcement took down two of the biggest Dark Web marketplaces, AlphaBay and Hansa Market. AlphaBay went down first, with Hansa not far behind. Authorities had apparently been operating Hansa since June and used the influx of traffic from the shuttered AlphaBay to catch more criminals before taking down the site.

AlphaBay and Hansa Market were exclusive marketplaces where criminals could transact anonymously behind the scrims of special software called Tor and the hard-to-trace blockchains that power cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. They were places where criminals could buy things like illegal firearms, drugs and tools for launching cyberattacks, such as botnets.