Posted on 09/07/2017 3:44:01 PM PDT by Mariner
Equifax, one of the three major consumer credit reporting agencies, said on Thursday that a data breach left Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and other sensitive information for 143 million United States consumers vulnerable to hackers.
Criminals gained access to certain files in the company’s system from mid-May to July by exploiting a weak point in a website application, according to an investigation by Equifax. The company said that it discovered the intrusion on July 29 and has since found no evidence of unauthorized activity on its main consumer or commercial credit reporting databases.
Hackers were able to retrieve birth dates and addresses, as well as credit card numbers for 209,000 consumers. Documents with personal information used in disputes for 182,000 consumers was also taken.
Equifax said that some personal information for British and Canadian residents was also hacked.
The data breach at Equifax is not the largest. Yahoo disclosed in September 2016 that 500 million user accounts had been hacked in 2014, followed by a second disclosure three months later that a different attack in 2013 compromised more than one billion accounts.
Equifax said that, in addition to reporting the breach to law enforcement, it had hired a cybersecurity firm to conduct a review to determine the scale of the invasion. The investigation is expected to wrap up within the next few weeks.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If you went to Equifax right now and set up an account, they’d walk you thru numerous questions like...
Out of the 4 addresses below, is one of them your current address? They’d list 4 addresses and one WILL BE yours. They’d do the same question but with the address you lived at as a kid. And one of the addresses will be your old address. Then they’d give you four companies and ask you to ID the one you worked at from the period of this to that. And one would be the company you worked at.
The same thing would happen if it were the other two credit bureaus. They know everything.
Us also. I hope it helps.
Actually, you HAVE used them.
All four Credit Reporting companies have all your personal info they need to create a full personal profile on your credit.
This is VERY serious and I would NOT be surprised to hear they outsource their IT dept.
As a mortgage lender; this is a bad thing. For a mortgage loan; a lender will pull a tri-merged report that includes EquiFax; Trans Union and Experian.
So Equifax isn’t some small niche company.
They are part of the backbone of someones credit in this country.
Good point(s)
Interesting that all 3 executives sold their stocks just prior of the hacking. Which may have been an inside job or that is one hell of a coincidence.
This is probably larger than the Yahoo breach because it’s USA credit, not international. Yahoo has members across the globe. 123M is probably 94% of the US ADULT population, or credit card holders. Maybe the “wall” we need to build is a cyber wall, and make it impenetrable.
The knew about the hack before it was reported.
Pay them enough? Nah, it’s not possible with the amount of money they can make stealing. They can sell the information over, and over, and over, and...
Wells Fargo once created a charge account for me that I didn't want or ask for. Citi leaked my email address to a spammer and had to assign me a new account number. Citi once lost my online account access and it had to be re-initialized. These guys need to audit themselves. But how can they? It seems that neither they nor anyone else in the industry has any IT or cybersecurity skills.
Betcha nobody is held to account for their failure ... much less will get exposed and fired!
That sounds like LexisNexis.
“Glad I’ve never used equisucks.”
They already have all your info!
“It’s one of the three agencies and gathers and maintains information on over 800 million consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equifax
Maybe we should spend LESS time b*tching about it and MORE TIME on sharing ideas on how we can PROTECT our accounts like changing user names and passwords.
Where was the NSA?
Hmmmmm, so your business and our government are safely stored on the CLOUD.... Phoeeey.
wish the hackers would hack all the big banks and wipe out everybody’s mortgage, car, home equity loans (like with a cloth or something), lol.
“Maybe we should spend LESS time b*tching about it and MORE TIME on sharing ideas on how we can PROTECT our accounts like changing user names and passwords.”
WHAT? Are you sure you know what Equifax is? We don’t have passwords for it!
I have LifeLock...I consider it an insurance policy—I am more likely to have identity theft than auto accident.
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