Yesterday, Equifax announced that their system was hacked, and ~143 million Americans are potentially at risk. That’s nearly 44% of the American population. In other words, an even greater percentage of folks who actually have credit!
Equifax Fumbles Sensitive Information of Millions of Americans
Link: Equifax Cybersecurity Incident Announcement
Link: How to Tell If You’re at Risk
According to the chairman and CEO of Equifax, the site was hacked sometime between mid May and July 2017. The attackers gained access to consumer information like:
- Addresses
- Birth dates
- Social Security numbers
- Driver’s license numbers
Additionally, Equifax says the intruders accessed credit card information of ~209,000 consumers, and dispute documents of ~182,000 consumers.
According to the New York Times, one fraud analyst said:
On a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of risk to consumers, this is a 10.
Thankfully, folks will NOT be liable for unauthorized charges. But it’s disappointing that Equifax has taken so long to let us know that our privacy has been violated (I’d like to have known sooner so I could have spent more time worrying!).
I find it pretty unnerving that personal information like my credit card information and Social Security Number can be snatched from companies that I have no choice but to depend on.
What to Do About It
You can check if you’ve been affected by clicking here and entering your last name and the last 6 digits of your Social Security Number. If you’re affected, you will see this:
If Equifax things you’ve been impacted by the attack, you’ll get the opportunity to enroll in a program called TrustedID Premier for free.
It will take a few days to finish enrollment, and you’ll have to take some additional steps to complete the process.
With TrustedID Premier, you’ll get a free year of:
- Credit monitoring of Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion credit reports
- Copies of Equifax credit reports
- Ability to lock and unlock Equifax credit reports
- Identity theft insurance
- Internet scanning for Social Security Numbers
For folks who have questions, you can visit the Equifax Security 2017 website or call 866-447-7559. Their security line is open every day between 7:00 am and 1:00 am Eastern Time.
Note: Thanks to reader John who points out that if you enroll in the Equifax TrustedID Premier, you are waiving your right to participate in the class action lawsuit being waged against Equifax!
Bottom Line
Between mid-May and late July 2017, Equifax experienced a security breach. And they waited until yesterday to let us know about it!
Intruders gained access to ~143 million Social Security Numbers, driver’s license numbers, addresses, and more! They were even able to steal ~209,000 credit card numbers.
Click this link and follow the instructions to see if you were affected!
How do we request a credit freeze with all 3 agencies? And how much would that cost us? Also, can we put in a request on behalf of someone who’s not English efficiency? Thanks to anyone who replies.
This is definitely a huge issue and we should all monitor things as the days progress. The best thing to do is to probably just freeze credit reporting at all three major agencies and only unfreeze when you want to apply for credit cards, mortgages or insurance. The 1 year offer from Equifax will only cover you for one year and hackers can now use this data for the rest of our lives. In my humble opinion, the government is partly to blame for not passing a law years ago that kept SS # private and only for use in the SS administration rather than let it become a means of identification for every financial account we use in today’s world.
And the execs sold of millions in personal stock right before the share price tumbled on the news.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/08/outrage-builds-after-equifax-execs-stock-sale/
I don’t buy the three executives that sold their shares didn’t know anything about it. Most likely they said “Fxxk everyone, we already made $”.
No one needs to be concerned about stolen credit card numbers. There is $0 liability for the cardholder and a new number can be issued by the bank easily. The issue is that your name, address, SSN and birthdate are likely to have been exposed. You can NEVER alter that data, so we could all be dealing with identity fraud forever. One year of “credit monitoring” is useless. The cyber thieves can just wait one year to start using this info. Also, please point out that signing up for the credit monitoring automatically waives your right to sue Equifax in court or be part of a class action lawsuit against them.