Is it just me or does it seem like we don’t worry about this sort of crap enough:
Anyone, if you didn’t think this was inevitable, please raise your hand.
Good, no hands up.
This shit was completely predictable. Each of these agencies is the Mother Lode Fort Knox of Personal Identifying Information (PII). There is so much shit concentrated there that any identity thief worth his attack scripts would have to try to take it. You could make an extremely boring heist movie about this shit.
And the vault doors opened… and stayed open for more than two months :eek:… for a stupid web vulnerability. :smack: F’ing amateurs.
Well if everyone were to take the proper security precautions this wouldn’t be a problem.
Every few months you should be changing your name, date of birth, gender, and social security number.
Right! Okay, from now until I change it, my name is Bob, I’m male, born on January 1st, 1949 and my ssn is 123-54-9876. 
Seriously, yes. I figured that by now so many companies have been hacked that every single person in the country has had their PII seized and sold and it’s just a matter of time before we are all boned. So I’m not surprised by this news. Sad and cynical, but not surprised.
Did you see where three Equifax executives sold stock just before the data breech was announced? The smell coming from that company is overwhelming.
It looks like they got my info on this hack, for the 3rd time. I was also compromised by the Office of Personnel Management hack, and some store gave away my credit card number, so Discover gave me a new account number.
Maybe we all need to go into Witness Protection.
Equifax is offering a free year of credit protection and monitoring services to people affected. If you accept it, you waive your right to sue or take part in a class action lawsuit against Equifax. Obviously that last part isn’t as widely advertised. Granted most people aren’t going to take action anyway but if you already have monitoring as part of one of the 19,000 other recent data breeches or something like Lifelock, it’s good to at least be aware of your options.
It wasn’t just before it was announced; it is worse than that. It was just after it was discovered, which was many weeks before it was announced.
Changing all my passwords isn’t going to help with this one, is it?
If you go to Equifax’s website you can check to see if your information was compromised. If so, they offer you free enrollment in their credit monitoring service. Sadly, Mrs. MeanJoe and I both had data compromised so we’ll have to worry if anyone uses that information to try and open accounts in our name now.
Their website had a crappy rollout. Yesterday it told me I wasn’t affected. Today it told me I was. Brian Krebs piles on here: Equifax Breach Response Turns Dumpster Fire – Krebs on Security
I guess I’ll sign up for the credit monitoring. I think the credit monitoring I got after the last compromise of my information has expired. My full ID information has been circulating on the dark web for years. I’ve been thinking of doing a credit freeze instead.
Yeah, about that credit monitoring. Please note that they changed the ULA to remove your right to sue or be part of a class action lawsuit against them if you sign up for it.
Nonsense. They take security very seriously. They made sure their Chief Security Officer had not one, but two degrees in music composition.
Sorry, Equifax, but IMHO your company sucks. Why would I want to do any further business with you? I’m part of the class action suit, I hope the settlement hurts them.
That’s the social security number of my luggage!
The best protection is to put a freeze on your credit at all three credit agencies. It is easiest to do it by phone because the websites require you to answer more difficult questions than when you do it by phone.
Even if someone has your social security number and other confidential info, they should not be able to open a new credit card in your name with a freeze in effect.
BTW, credit freezes are not possible if you’re from Canada. There it seems the best option is creating an alert which is weaker protection.
Guess what? You don’t get to choose to do business with them or not. The banks and credit card companies and everyone else who dumps your data with them get to choose. You and I are screwed.
The Times today reports that when a reporter entered the name of “Trump” and some random numbers as an SSN he got exactly the same results as when he entered his own data. So don’t trust their website.
I meant as far as accepting their offer of free credit checks.
Yes, this is a very good idea. I just did it. Experian charged me $10, Transunion and Equifax were free.
Equifax were the only one who would not let me specify my own password, so of course I have to make a note of it somewhere and store it on my computer. Nice security plan, Equifax.