HUGE data breach at Equifax
 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...lion-customers

"Equifax Inc. said its systems were struck by a cybersecurity incident that may have affected about 143 million U.S. consumers, shedding light on what could be ranked as one of the largest breaches in history.

Intruders accessed names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and driver’s license numbers, Equifax said in a statement. Credit card numbers for about 209,000 consumers were also accessed, the company said. Equifax shares dropped more than five percent in after-hours trading."

You can check to see if you were impacted at: https://www.equifax.com/personal/ or https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com

Equifax is also offering complimentary ID monitoring for one year that can be accessed at their websites (linked above).

It says: You can check to see if you were impacted at...

Tried that, but they do not tell you if you were or were not impacted. They just give you some number code to use for "registering next week".

Key point from The Guardian:

"Equifax discovered the hack 29 July, but waited until Thursday to warn consumers."

Apparently you can receive one of three messages when you check:

1. Here's your date to register.

2. Our records indicate you have been impacted.

3. Our records indicate you have not been impacted.

At least you didn't get #3 .

Thanks, Diplomatico.
I got message 1, which I guess means they don't know whether or not I've been impacted.

I just got the message, "Based on the information provided, we believe that your personal information was not impacted by this incident." So apparently they are doing some sifting out when you first try to enrol.

I got message 1 too. Can't say that gives me any confidence.

Sadly, that would be my first thought as well :(

Argh. Ditto. #1 was not very comforting.

Project Mayhem for those "Fight Club" fans.

In my memory, I have not heard of such a massive hack which involves 4 sensitive pieces of information - name, DOB, SSN and Address. That is basically all you need in order to identify a person in the USA!!

This will end up being much bigger than the Target incident which involved a POS hack.

Damn... I got the may have been impacted by this incident message.

Perhaps related, according to Bloomberg, three Equifax execs sold almost $2 million in stock between the discovery and announcement.

That's completely illegal, and I'm sure the SEC will investigate if that's true... Those people will see jail time.

Well remember who's president.

If the SEC chairman is a former industry guy, he probably won't come down too hard.

My understanding is that this is not the first time Equifax has been breached.

I don't know what kind of laws there are about data protection but if these companies are collecting data but are unable or unwilling to spend the money to protect it, there should be sanctions against such companies.