Potentially 143 Million Peoples' Data Breached

Equifax hacked.

Published on September 8, 2017 By DrJBHL In Personal Computing

Not good news, folks.

Equifax was breached...and potentially, the financial data of 143 million folks...

"While the massive breach that Yahoo revealed last year involved more accounts, topping 1 billion, that intrusion exposed people's phone numbers and passwords. Equifax said its breach includes “names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers.”

The company added that credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers were accessed, along with some dispute documents that contained personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers.

Equifax is offering a number of services for free to people, including credit monitoring. (You can find more information here, and see our expert advice below on protecting your data.) The breach happened mid-May through July and was discovered July 29, Equifax said. It also said it has seen no evidence of unauthorized activity on its core consumer or commerical reporting databases.

“It’s one of the worst hacks imaginable," said Dan Guido, CEO of the cyber-security firm Trail of Bits. “People should be extraordinarily angry at companies like Equifax. We place a huge amount of trust in them about money matters but they’re so easily compromised by simplistic attacks like this one.” - Dan Guido, CEO of the cyber-security firm Trail of Bits

We should trust Guido.

About the max of my humor at this juncture.

PLEASE get on board with your bank's credit/Social Security/Document monitoring. I'm in no hurry to trust Equifax at this point although thet're offering free credit monitoring at this point to customers...

I do recommend you go to this site and "begin enrollment" so you can check whether your data has been potentially impacted. Then, make your own decision whether you want the free one year of services.

https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/enroll/

I did and got the answer:

"Based on the information provided, we believe that your personal information was not impacted by this incident."

"To be(lieve) or not to be(lieve), that is the question."

Comments

WOM

on Sep 08, 2017

Yeah saw that and the Gov. wants to go all electronic instead of paper money, and they can't stop the hackers.

kryo

on Sep 08, 2017

I'm in no hurry to trust Equifax at this point although thet're offering free credit monitoring at this point to customers...

I certainly would not trust their competence to protect anyone's identity. 'Fool me once' and all that. Also I saw it mentioned on another site that their T&C for monitoring requires you give up any right to sue them.

That said, in general credit monitoring is a purely reactive solution. By the time they alert you to anything, it will already be too late. A better solution is to place a fraud alert on your file (which is free and tells any potential creditors to perform extra checks before granting credit, but has to be renewed every 90 days) and/or freeze your files entirely (which costs a few bucks from each bureau), though the latter will make it somewhat annoying to get new credit yourself if you do need it (unfreezing temporarily or permanently also costs).

DrJBHL

on Sep 08, 2017

kryo

reply 2

A better solution is to place a fraud alert on your file (which is free and tells any potential creditors to perform extra checks before granting credit, but has to be renewed every 90 days) and/or freeze your files entirely (which costs a few bucks from each bureau), though the latter will make it somewhat annoying to get new credit yourself if you do need it (unfreezing temporarily or permanently also costs).

Not a bad solution...but unfortunately probably necessary at this point.

Publius of NV

on Sep 08, 2017

Possibly related, two of my wife's business credit cards have been compromised in the last 3 days, with American Express calling her to verify purchase attempts (one was for $5000 worth of cosmetics). They've denied the charges and are sending her new cards.

Victechnical

on Sep 08, 2017

quoting post

"Based on the information provided, we believe that your personal information was not impacted by this incident."

"To be(lieve) or not to be(lieve), that is the question."

I also got that response when I ran the check at their website, but as you say who knows. My bank offers instant alerts for pretty much every transaction via email and/or text.

This might be a good time for people to check if this option is available on their accounts.

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