Cyber safety service Norton 360 is having a new dark web monitoring feature added to it from Tuesday.
NortonLifeLock, formerly known as Symantec, says it will use a combination of "AI and human technology" to scan the dark web and private forums for customers' personal information.
If stolen private data is found in those searches, the affected Norton 360 customer will be notified and advised on what to do next to limit the damage.
"We did a cyber safety report last year and it's results showed one in six New Zealanders had their identities breached. So it's pretty common," NortonLifeLock NZ's Samantha Edwards told Newshub.
The report she referred to found that over 605,000 New Zealand adults (17 percent) have experienced identity theft, with 5 percent impacted in 2019.
The new service will monitor the dark web for over 120 personal identifiable information types including email, physical address, phone number, driver licence number, credit card and bank account numbers and gaming service logins.
Despite working in cyber security, Edwards says using the dark web monitoring service has shown her own personal information had been breached.
"I put my information in including four email addresses, bank account details, credit card details and so on. And it popped up with a breach, through a fitness app - MyFitnessPal," she said.
"What NortonLifeLock did was tell me when it was breached and what information was breached, which was my username and password for that particular app.
"Then it goes further and tells you what you can do and for this one it just told me to go into MyFitnessPal and change my username and password. I've linked everything back to Norton's password manager, so I just changed it there."
The dark web monitoring service won't incur an additional fee - it's being added to existing packages.
"Norton 360 customers will have this rolled into the product on August 25. They'll have a notification pop up and they just need to accept that then they'll be able to start entering their information," said Edwards.
NortonLifeLock is also launching a cyber crime podcast that will centre on online threats affecting Kiwis and Australians.
The first episode features Love Island Australia 2018 winner Tayla Damir detailing how an identity thief hacker drained her bank account and took over her digital life.
