It seems that Air Canada and Aeroplan aren't the only ones with flakey computer systems these days. (Is that enough of a connection to put it in this forum?)

A couple of weeks ago Mrs. Tax Dude got an email from Equifax Canada thanking her for purchasing their "Score Power" report for $23.95. For those of you who don't know, that report is a combination of credit history and FICO score. It's a good idea to look at your credit history periodically to see if there are any mistakes or unusual activity and it's kind of interesting to see your FICO score too. I had created Equifax accounts (or "profiles" as they term them) for both of us a while ago, however, the last time we had actually purchased reports was in February of 2007. The email gave us concerns that someone had accessed my wife's account and had run off a credit report giving them access to our credit card and LOC limits, outstanding loans, payment history, etc.

I emailed their customer services right away and got a "we'll get back to you" automatic response. I also spent a while changing the passwords of our various online accounts since I was concerned my incredibly simple common password had been compromised!

Today I was looking at our Visa bill online and saw two charges for $23.95 from Equifax and since I hadn't heard back from them I called their 800 number. They immediately knew what the problem was and said "a lot of people" had been affected and we would see a credit within 5 days. I eventually spoke to a manager who assured me that it was an internal error and that my wife's account hadn't been compromised and none of our information had been divulged. She also said that "all the April 21st charges" were being refunded, but that my wife's hadn't been processed yet. They were very apologetic.

That's all well-and-good, but I'm bothered that Equifax was able to run a couple of charges through on our Visa card without authorization. I wasn't aware that they even stored credit card numbers - to my recollection, no mention of this is made when setting up a profile and their "Site Terms of Use" makes no mention of it either. It's especially irritating that these bogus charges are from the company to which I paid a fee so that I can keep an eye on my credit report and watch for errors/identity theft/fraud/etc.

Rant over.

I'd guess that a lot of people were affected but I haven't read anything about it anywhere. Did anyone else here notice any unauthorized Equifax charges?