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Equifax today announced a “cybersecurity incident”. In other words, they were hacked, and about 143 million US consumers are potentially affected.
Equifax says that the information accessed “primarily includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers, were accessed.”
| UPDATE: Before proceeding with the Equifax solution shown below, please read this post: Is the Equifax cure worse than the hack? Here’s what I plan to do… |
Ouch. Luckily Equifax has made it easy to find out if you were affected. Simply go to this website and fill out the text boxes:
Neither my wife nor I were affected (assuming this site is working properly!)
Protect yourself, for free
After checking your status, you can begin enrollment in TrustedID Premier, for free, by pressing the orange button labelled “Enroll”. Note that enrollment is not instant. I was told that I could complete enrollment on or after September 15th:
Equifax describes TrustedID Premier, as follows:
The offering, called TrustedID Premier, includes 3-Bureau credit monitoring of Equifax, Experian and TransUnion credit reports; copies of Equifax credit reports; the ability to lock and unlock Equifax credit reports; identity theft insurance; and Internet scanning for Social Security numbers – all complimentary to U.S. consumers for one year. The website also provides additional information on steps consumers can take to protect their personal information. Equifax recommends that consumers with additional questions visit www.equifaxsecurity2017.com or contact a dedicated call center at 866-447-7559, which the company set up to assist consumers. The call center is open every day (including weekends) from 7:00 a.m. – 1:00 a.m. Eastern time.
More details about this stuff can be found here: equifaxsecurity2017.com
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I went to the equifux site and it said I “may” have been compromised. So i did the initial sign up, and they sent an email for the ‘full’ sign up. when I clicked on the email to sign up, it said:
“Our records indicate that you have already enrolled and activated the TrustedID Premier product. Attempting to enroll again is not necessary.”
HUH? I do NOT remember ever signing up previously to trusted premier, so what’s going on? Unless it was when the store “Target” got hit and they offer free monitoring, which I think I might have signed up for? Very odd.
[…] Find out if you were affected by Equifax’s data breach […]
I also went to the link to check if I was affected, it told me I was not, but my husband was! Now they want us to wait until next week?
The three credit agencies charge a fee for placing a freeze, it depends of the state, if you are not a victim of identity theft.
But I have the same question, why do we need to pay? if our information was compromised, we are victims or not?
They’re pushing people to sign up for the site because in doing so they waive their right to be a part of a class action suit. Pretty terrible.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-some-equifax-customers-have-unwittingly-waived-their-rights-to-a-class-action-lawsuit-2017-09-08
Oh fun. My Social and birthday were used 3 or 4 years ago, but no cc info. I was told that my info could be dormant for years and then resurface to be used again, Since it was my ss# I’ve been paying for monitoring (not w Equifax but w Experian) and so far so good. I was considering dropping it at the end of the year but guess I won’t for now.
[…] I published Equifax’s suggested solution. When you browse to the Equifax website, you’ll see a notice stating: “Equifax […]
Watch out for arbitration clauses if you accept their service. I’m sure they’ll be in there.
I did not get the confusing “Thank You” message. However I did have 2 fraudulent charges in France on 9/7. Also a friend in Mexico had fraudulent charges in Mexico the same day. Coincidence?
correction:
Friend in Mexico had fraudulent charges in France
Thanks all. I’m working on a follow-up post. Please stay tuned…
Equifax is doing a terrible job of handling this. My check showed I was affected. Enrolled in the protection plan and cannot sign up until next week. Why the delay? The info is out there NOW. Guess the bad actors get a week to work on the data before we get any protection. To add insult to injury, now I have had to pay Equifax $10 to put a freeze on my credit. But the really insulting part of this is the report that 3 senior Equifax execs sold their stock ($1.8 mil worth) before issuing the report on the hack. All around bad!
I too went to their page to see if I was affected and got no info, just the link to sign up for monitoring. So I went back to check the source code on the page that should have said one way or the other and code for both affected and not affected was there, just that neither one was triggered. I’m going to check back later to see if I get a different result.
Not sure if I am being too calm about this but there is a new hack every week. Yes this one involves SSN and DL# etc but hey there are 143m Americans impacted. There is nothing you can do unless you want to try to change your SSN and DL. Sign up for the credit monitoring, use it, and stay alert.
Plus, I think that the SS number was initially never meant to be an ‘identifiying number’ to be used for identity purposes. They should be using random 9 digit numbers that can be changed every year (like what they now have on driver’s licenses).
[…] Equifax today announced a “cybersecurity incident”. In other words, they were hacked, and about 143 million US consumers are potentially affected. Equifax says that the information accessed “primarily includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers, were accessed.” Ouch. Luckily Equifax has made it easy to find out if you were affected. Simply go to this website and fill out the text boxes:LEARN MORE! […]
This is terrible. What proactive steps do I take? change everyone of my passwords? No info given on what info of mine maybe at risk? Is it my address, my social, my banking info….
This is an absolute joke.
I’ll take what’s left of my financial worth and short their stock……
I was told that I am affected when I input my info, so evidently if you see nothing you probably are not. However, the language is VERY confusing. Also, if I have to give up class action status to get the monitoring, it’s not worth it. This one is inexcusable. So is hiding the info and so is three top execs at Equifax selling massive amounts of stock after the breach was found, but before it was announced.
Isn’t that illegal? Didn’t they go after Martha Stewart back in 2004 for the same thing. Isn’t that called ‘insider trading’? Why aren’t there charges being brought against those executives? Did they pay off some officials with that windfall of $$ they received?