I'm pretty sure nobody gave their info directly to Equifax. That info was provided by myriad enterprises. Likely without your specific permission.
Who is liable for losses?
This is the crown jewels of data hacks. ALL the important info for ID theft and fraud, correctly associated, up to date and all in one place.
Yep.
Glad I’ve never used equisucks.
Why don’t these people just hire hackers to do network security, it would obviously be a better option then finding white hat it professionals that have never broke the law.
Give these black hat hackers good paying jobs protecting data and they’ll stop stealing it. Because they are in it for ransom money.
Well my family’s info was exposed when there was a data breach AT THE IRS, who then gave me a year’s free identity protection FROM EQUIFAX !
“Equifax Says Cyberattack May Have Affected 143 Million Customers”
customers my ass. The data stolen was not CUSTOMER data. WE are not the customers, WE are what Equifax SELLS to their actual customers, namely anyone thinking about granting a loan to any of us.
This is one of the main credit reporting agencies where your credit rating is set for creditors / lenders to report your compliance and also to check your credit rating in determining if they will give you an account. This includes the electric company, credit cards, banks, etc. 143 million customers would pretty much be all adults, so most of the country’s data is with this agency - probably most or all us reading this have our data here.
I’ve had a credit security freeze in place for about 10 years. Not sure if that gives protection in a case like this, though.
These people that gather all this private information should be held 100% liable for any and all fraud that results from their carelessness.
Someone stole my identity.
I charged them $10,000.00 to take it back.
OMG!!!!! This is a freakin disaster!!!!! Very scary...this will justify chipping folks!!! I’m so mad!!! This crime committed involves ALL of us!!! Incompetent government! UGH!!
Saw a commercial today, one of these groups is offering a *free* scan to see if your info is on the *dark web*.
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.
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.
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.
It was secure because of the "1" appended to the word.
Either that or someone who works for Equifax and has admin privileges sold all that data for a few million bucks.
I don’t recall ever giving “Equifax” or any other “credit agency” my PERMISSION to compile a file on my personal information. I’m sure the lawsuit would get tossed if I sued them on “invasion of privacy” those grounds, but it might be worth a try anyway. In fact, if a lot of people did this, one or two cases might make before a sympathetic judge.
A lot of companies use Equifax under a 3rd party contract so this could be a big deal. Not sure.
??
What kind of computer systems do they have in that place?
Yes but hiring that foreign IT company to write and manage all that software sure saved Equifax a lot of money.