Equifax is one of the three major consumer credit reporting agencies, with oodles of information about every American consumer and their finances.
And they got hacked, and about 143 million people’s data — addresses, SSNs, birth dates, even drivers license numbers — are in the wild.
They have a page to go to — https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/ — ostensibly to find out if you’re one of the unlucky hackees, but they are basically offering credit record protection for free for a year to everyone (and anticipating such a rush that they’re staggering the enrollment).
Yikes.
Just as a note — anyone in any sort of security capacity who is still treating SSN or DoB as a secure value or way to verify identity is a dolt and should be fired.
Equifax Says Cyberattack May Have Affected 143 Million Customers
Criminals gained access to certain files in the company’s system from mid-May to July, according to an investigation by Equifax.
I just hope they didn't get the answers to those high security questions used for banking identify checks.
Which of the following streets have you lived on?
Which of these companies have you had a mortgage with in the last ten years?
Those would be a gold mine.
That's weird. I put my wife's name and number on and got no match.
I put mine in and instead of saying I was fine or not, it told me I was now enrolled.
Which makes me think that's their way of saying I was in the data. But it sure wasn't clear.
+Kee Hinckley right. "Hey! We just gave away all our customer data! Enroll now!"
Yeah, looking even worse than I thought, and handled with remarkable ineptness by Equifax.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/09/why-the-equifax-breach-is-very-possibly-the-worst-leak-of-personal-info-ever/