Posted on 09/07/2017 2:19:50 PM PDT by granite
Equifax is a wretched company. I had a credit card that I never made a charge on. I went overseas and when I returned I found that Equifax reported that account was delinquent and lowered my credit rating. I contacted Equifax, who wrote back that they had “investigated” and the negative report on me was true. I contacted the bank, who told me they never reported that my account was overdue. Equifax still refused to correct my credit history, and shamelessly lied about it. You would think that one of the “consumer protection acts” would do something about such sleazy credit reporting companies. Actually, look who was writing the laws: creatures like Barney Frank.
I’ve been quite lucky with my credit.
The accounts don’t seem to get screwed up, and they report out rather accurately.
I do keep tabs on them.
Other people seem to have nightmare stories to tell.
I feel for you folks. You’re dealing with a conglomerate, and it’s very difficult.
BINGO! There's the problem right there. The bank I work for currently says they can hire five Indian's for the price of one American yet the problem is they cannot build anything that works and they don't know our systems.
Probably why they keep old (55) farts like me around. I know how shit works, still know how to engineer and design well enough that I can pass the coding off to someone else to do the grunt work (coding and unit testing.)
Not that I'm in a hurry to retire, but it's gonna be sweet when I do.
Round about May to July when this breach happened, got an email from american express (or so they said) to tell me the good news about points being awarded to the card for use with Uber and with Lyft and isn’t that great etc., and did so by charging the card $1 each for Uber and Lyft to “start your account”.
Contacted Miss or Mrs. Dr. Bombay in Mumbai at the Amex call center and demanded they remove the charges and any affiliation with either outfit. Response was to say that Amex was not doing this.... so this card must have been “sold” to whomever was jacking around with Amex, Uber and Lyft with information. Was hopping mad, and shut down the card right away, with new number card sent 24 hours.
Pretty sure the breach enabled someone to sell the info to someone pushing this crapola, and doing it through google (no surprise).
Any one else have this happen? Allowed as how if travelling and need a “ride” usually have a driver provided or my own self, and will never want my info shared with these two orgs.
Checked into a motel on a flight and next day a note from Amex denying a charge. I looked to see where the Indian motel manager tried to charge a purchase in India for 7,500 in Indian money. Amex wouldn’t tell me the result of their investigation but I sure wished that guy was fired or the motel put on a list of fraud sites. It was a motel in Lincoln, NE.
As much as I hate Bank of America (having worked for them in the past .....) I will say that anytime I've had to call with an online banking question the person I'm connected with is always here in the U.S.A. Last time I asked where the person helping me was, they replied North Dakota. Prior to that it was someone in Montana. Based on the lack of punjabi accent, I'd say that's exactly where they were.
Equifax will likely contact the banks and credit card issuing companies first. That's why I monitor my bank and credit card activity on my cellphone at least once a day. I wouldn't be surprised within a week my current cards are cancelled and a new ATM check card from my bank and a new credit card from Capital One. And Google and Yahoo! may ask me to update my login credentials.
Has anyone been able to log into the Lifelock site?
The site times out when I try to log in.
Maybe there was a link in the article posted here; I just read in my hometown paper webpage. There is a link in the article linked above I read to a consumer information page where I checked my and my daughter's data, but we didn't sign up for the "plan".
I figured I was in their database because I've had credit checks run and recently applied for raising the limit on my one and only credit card.
Tons of people can be in their database without even knowing.
bmp
Re: Equifax hacking and break in
I use Norton and Lifelock.
This morning, I got an email from Norton the Equifax hacking and break in. That email allowed me (hopefully others) to go to a site that checks if your emails are in hands of known criminals.
I can’t post my email because of personal data on it. According to Norton, our emails are safe via that personal email/link.
However, the link below worked for two neighbors, non Norton Customers from different homes to check out if their email had been hacked.
If you get a reply that their server is down, wait a few minutes to then try again. That worked for both neighbors. They have to be getting swamped by their customers and equifax’s.
Thank you.
Oh, I’m a customer is it? I thought you were just spying on me and gathering information to sell to others.
Yes, if we are customers, how do we quit, opt out, have them remove our data?
So here's a quick article on how to Freeze Your Credit Report at all three Credit Reporting Bureau's.
This is really the ONLY truly effective way to stop anyone who steals your identity from opening up credit cards, taking out loans, or otherwise using your good name to obtain credit.
The article gives both the Websites and Phone#'s of all three credit reporting agencies with instructions on how to freeze your credit report.
The cost is $10 per credit agency to freeze your credit report which to me was peace of mind. The "downside" is that there's also a cost any time you want to un-freeze your credit report to obtain credit or allow a credit check for things like buying a car, opening a new credit card, etc..
I have no need to do those things at the moment so I felt "better safe than sorry" to freeze all three credit reports.
While I recommend reading the article because it does contain good information, here's the phone#'s for each Credit Reporting agency. It's a simple matter to follow the phone prompts to freeze your credit report, have a credit card handy to do it:
Equifax: Freeze Your Equifax Credit Report, 1-800-685-1111 (NY residents 1-800-349-9960)
Experian: Freeze Your Experian Credit Report, 1-888-397-3742
TransUnion: Freeze Your TransUnion Credit Report, 1-888-909-8872
I would venture a guess that Facebook is more a threat to privacy. The personal information revealed on Facebook is a more serious threat to identity theft.
Facebook dwarfs all of them combined.
I went to the website and followed the prompts. It said I “may have been compromised”. When I went through the steps it wanted me to sign up for identity protection. And it asked for my SS #. You’d think if they know I’ve been compromised they’d HAVE my SS #. I stopped the process. It’s a scam!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.