The Equifax security breach scandal keeps growing and growing. Their handling of the data breach that affected as many as 143 million accounts has been horrendous.
Executives dumped their shares before reporting the stolen data. Following the breach, their website did not function properly, people got signed up for programs they did not want or need, and customer service has been dismal all around.
Equifax is Not Your Friend
InTheseTimes reports The Equifax Hacking Scandal Is a Reminder That Credit-Reporting Agencies Are Not Our Friends.
Last week, Equifax—one of the country’s three major credit-reporting agencies alongside Experian and Transunion—revealed that its security apparatus had been breached. “Hackers” obtained private financial information the company held on over 140 million Americans. This is the third major security breach Equifax has suffered in the past two years, and it is by far the worst. Cybersecurity experts call it a 10 out of 10 on the catastrophe scale—with the negative consequences potentially lasting for decades.
Equifax became aware of the hacks on July 29 and the company’s top brass took immediate action. But rather than moving to alert the public that their information could be compromised, on August 1 and 2, three leading executives—including the company’s chief financial officer (CFO) John Gamble—sold nearly $2 million worth of shares in the company. Traders also noticed a sudden—and suspicious—selling of Equifax stock options.
Gamble has been with the company since 2014 and has only once sold shares prior to last month’s sale.
Equifax hired a customer-service agency to assist with the volume of calls they’d be receiving. Yet the company didn’t inform the agency of whom was likely affected by the breach, so when people started calling in, the outsourced contact centers were unable to provide useful information.
The company also offered a one-year free trial with TrustedID—an identity protection company acquired by Equifax in 2013. With TrustedID’s credit-monitoring services, those who signed up would be able to definitively tell if their financial data was exposed through the breach.
However, the service appeared to come with a catch. Equifax’s Terms of Use spelled out that by signing up, customers would waive the right to participate in a class-action lawsuit. After a social-media backlash, Equifax clarified that the “arbitration clause and class action waiver included in the Equifax and TrustedID premier terms of use does not apply to this cybersecurity incident.”
The scope of information obtained by the Equifax hackers likely won’t be known for many years. As of last week, the company’s security has changed from asking for the last four digits of customers’ social security number to asking for the last six, so it’s safe to assume that if you were included in the breach, the last four digits of your social security number are likely out there.
If there’s anything positive to be taken away from Equifax’s security blunder, it’s that it reminds us that in a shadowy surveillance economy, we aren’t the employee or the consumer, but the product. What’s to be done about this is up for debate—but not one we’re allowed to have any say in.
Many Reasons to Freeze Your Account
MarketWatch says there are many reasons why you should freeze your credit report today. Why? Because You risk financial chaos by doing nothing.
If you’re hoping to just ride out the Equifax breach scandal and do nothing about it, you might not have a problem next week or next month. Or even next year.
Since the credit reporting company Equifax EFX, -3.81% announced last Thursday it had been affected by a data breach earlier in the summer that potentially affected 143 million U.S. adults, consumers have had many questions about how to protect themselves. Some have not even been able to freeze their credit reports as security experts have suggested because Equifax and the other two credit bureaus TransUnion and Experian overloaded with calls and credit-freezing requests they were unable to handle.
If you don’t take any steps? This is what could happen:
Financial identity theft
Because the Equifax credit reports contained so much personal information, including Social Security numbers and financial account information, fraudsters could use the report for reasons including new account fraud, medical identity theft — using insurance information to have a medical procedure, which can create confusion on the true insured person’s medical file for years — or tax fraud, Levin said.
Fraud affected some 15.4 million consumers in 2016, or roughly 6.15% of all consumers, up 16% from 5.3% of consumers in 2015, according to Javelin, a security firm, in a report sponsored by security company LifeLock (which obviously has vested interest in the findings.) The mean amount it cost per fraud victim was $1,038, according to Javelin.
Incidents of new account fraud have risen especially quickly, Javelin found, because so much personal information has been compromised in data breaches over time. New account fraud also takes the longest to resolve, said Al Pascual, a senior vice president and research director at the security firm Javelin. “If you don’t take steps to actively protect your identity, you’re basically playing Russian roulette,” Pascual said.
Your data may have already been breached
At an absolute minimum, consumers should check their financial accounts, credit reports and credit score frequently, Nazari of Credit Sesame said. But putting a freeze or fraud alert on an account is strongly recommended, he said. Fraud alerts won’t prevent fraud from happening, but can let a consumer know when something looks suspicious, and they can follow up with the appropriate financial institution after.
Freeze Your Account
Unless you intend to open up new credit cards, get a car loan, or home equity loan, etc, there is every reason to freeze your account and be done with it.
Everyone else should monitor their accounts closely.
Meanwhile, there are some major insider trading violations by Equifax employees that need to be dealt with (not that I am a believer in insider trading laws, but rather because I am sick of financial CEOs getting off scoff free for all of their actions).
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Freezing accounts should have been done years ago. The only entities less-competent than credit agencies at protecting your information is the government. None of them can be trusted.
> Mish posted: “The Equifax security breach scandal keeps growing and growing. > Their handling of the data breach that affected as many as 143 million > accounts has been horrendous. Executives dumped their shares before reporting > the stolen data. Following the breach, t” >
1. Who gave Equifax (or any credit bureau) the authority to collect, store and SELL my personal information? I never gave them permission. Why are they allowed to do this?
2. Freeze all your accounts. Learn to pay cash. Starve them.
3. Get a PIN for your taxes. The IRS will issue you a code so that no one can file taxes unless they know the proper code.
4. Monitor your credit reports.
Better yet:
1. Cash only
2. Stop paying taxes, starve the bastards.
3. Move off grid.
4. Laugh maniacally at how entertaining this country is.
When you apply for credit, you give up your right to financial privacy. Creditors supply repayment information to the credit reporting companies on a monthly basis. That information is turned into millions of credit reports and is made available for a fee to businesses with a legitimate need to know. You can place a freeze on your credit reports, which means no more instant credit cards at Macy’s or JC Penney.
I have had credit freezes in place for over 12 years. They work. When the sales clerk at Macy’s told me several years ago that I could get $15 off a purchase if I applied for a Macy’s card that day, I went ahead with the application and it was rejected because of my credit report freeze. That was what was supposed to happen.
When the Equifax fiasco was made public, I requested a copy of my credit report and it arrived a week later. Everything was in order. Everyone in the US is entitled to one free credit report every year from each credit reporting company. Have you reviewed yours lately?
i tried just before the news. one site was down (experian i think) and trans union asked me an invalid multiple choice question (in which county did i live in a particular year) my county was not listed…
however, georgia does allow two free reports every year so i just need to call to get the other two
How do you know they have your info unless you give them your social security number? Not an option.
Equifax confirmed here that my data has been compromised
https://trustedidpremier.com/eligibility/eligibility.html
I shall probably set up an account with LifeLock unless someone tells me it’s not a good idea.
No expert not a lawyer. But I’ve read you lose ability to sue if you accept the free Lifelock service. In other news it’s reported that a guy created an app to auto file a legal case against Equifax in your state’s Small Claims court.
https://donotpay-chatbot.herokuapp.com/
It is a costly idea and it will not prevent the credit reporting agencies from releasing your credit reports to lenders with which you have no business relationship.
You don’t have to give them your whole SS number – just the last 6 digits. However, they can figure out the rest based on what state you got your SS card in.
sent letters to all three bureaus years ago freezing credit. also recommend limiting the number of credit cards which makes monitoring easier and simpler. i still have fraud issues from time to time, but at least i’ve reduced the possibility of new and fraudlent cards and accounts being opened in my name. 100% agree there have been far too many hacks and many made easier because companies like equifax and anthem not doing all they could so in the name of saving some money
Very complete Q&A on freezing…
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/09/the-equifax-breach-what-you-should-know/
At the least freeze the equifax credit reporting. Enough people freezing their equifax reports will make their service to potential creditors much less useful and possibly drive equifax out of this business. Remaining firms operating in this area will have a solid example of what happens when you own nothing but locked data which can’t be sold.
how do I freeze my account?
Check around on the equifax website (www.freeze.equifax.com). I found something there to freeze equifax online without charge. However they were supposed to provide an unfreeze PIN so you could unfreeze when needed. They returned no PIN after I froze my account so I guess I’ll have no easy way to unfreeze at equifax. Don’t anticipate needing credit anytime soon so for me I am not bothered by the one way freeze.
There is a line in the confirmation that says:
To view your one time PDF please Click Here
“Click Here” is a hyperlink that opens up a PDF with the 10-digit PIN.
I didn’t catch the “click here button” or perhaps it wasn’t displayed. In any case whatever PIN is gone for good at least for me. Others, be sure to look around and get the pin if offered I guess.
You need to freeze at least the 3 major credit agencies, Equifax, Transunion and Experian. All three must be “frozen”. Wolf Richter has had several good essays about this matter. https://wolfstreet.com/2017/09/07/how-to-protect-your-credit-after-a-hack-data-breach/
So the Chief Security Officer (CSO) apparently is a music-composition major. Was she qualified for the role? Her LinkedIn profile is suddenly private.
https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/09/16/0244211/equifax-cso-retires-known-bug-was-left-unpatched-for-nearly-five-months
“Was she qualified for the role?”
This is way too easy but since we’re in 2017 (political correctness galore)…….
You should freeze your social security account also. There’s a way to do it so that you must show up to an office in person with ID to start making withdrawals.
There needs to be an example made. Somebody needs to be criminally prosecuted and get jail time. I don’t mean some scapegoat underling. I mean senior executives and board members. Who is running these companies?
Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
Waste $10 on Experian (credit freeze) and luckily didn’t spent a dime with Transunion’s True Identity account. Didn’t even bother with Equif(NSFW).
Unless you’re in desperate need of getting a credit or a loan, freezing your credit is the best to go. (e.g. Tried to buy a car using full cash 2 years ago and the dealer still had to go through credit check and couldn’t due to my previous freeze.)
Scoff free is a malapropism for scot-free.
Slam dunk case of criminal insider trading against the executives (not mere employees)…It will tell us a lot if it’s not pursued…
HANG THE GUILTY BASTARDS
slam dunk, that’s a good one.
google choicepoint ftc sec stock sales (and for more chuckles, google equifax spinoff choicepoint)
The whole point of establishing credit scores was to get rid of racist lending practices and red lining. See, minorities couldn’t loans because The Man was keeping them down. Turns out the scoring system is racist too (probably designed by a white guy), but now with the added bonus of scale and huge central databases that are easy targets.
And thanks to the highly scaled, automatic score reporting system I now get asked if I want a credit card at every store, amazon.com, hotel, junk mail, real estate agent, and mobile phone store. They all make a ton of money selling credit card victims to the banks so you bet it’s worth it to train all the employees to always ask. As long as the number is high enough and the victim still has a pulse at least.
Remember, your credit score isn’t about you, it’s about selling you.
Is this connected with that new Fed agency (CFPB?) in some way?
According to the Equifax website, at least one of my children under the age of 18 is affected by this security breach. However, they’re not eligible to enroll in the credit monitoring service because they are under 18 years of age. What’s recommended for children under the age of 18?
“Unless you intend to open up new credit cards, get a car loan, or home equity loan, etc…”
As a recent divorcee having to rent an apartment while I look for a new home (not in this wretched Phoenix hell hole), my credit rating will serve me well. Hopefully by now Equifax has secured its data.
What is a credit freeze?
Does anybody have knowledge of how freezing credit reporting will affect auto insurance quotations?
My understanding is that one of the basis for insurance quotes is a persons credit rating (please don’t ask me why insurance companies see a statistical relationship because it seems like a blind man feeling his way around a room filled with mouse traps).
In fact don’t get me started on the insurance industry in general.
“Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.” (Outlaw Josie Wales)
Waiting for the goyim to awaken. Shouldn’t be much longer.
Could not a vendor before opening up a credit account for you implement two factor identification ? Just a thought .
In a lucky break I lost my wallet a couple of weeks ago and cancelled all my cards.