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Equifax Data Breach could affect 143 million customers

Q

quackamole

Member
Very Berry Sunday said:
I thought Transunion and Experian charge. How did you freeze your credit for free?
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Did it through their website. Transunion wants $5 to unfreeze but didn't charge for freezing. Experian didn't charge either.

I live in NY for reference, I think the fee to freeze and unfreeze is based on your state.

Also since equifax came out on twitter to waive the credit freeze, maybe the other two are doing it as well? This seem like it will be a huge deal once the 24 hour news cycle ran out of Irma footage and need to run new stories.
 
E

epmode

Member
BolognaSoup said:
Freeze requests for Experian (at least from Ohio) have to be made by snail mail. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW
Click to expand...

Did you try calling them? The error message on their website said the same thing for me (in another state) but they implemented the freeze over the phone.
 
T

TheOctodad

Member
I'm pretty sure their phone system is crashing. I'm getting errors or it's stalling out.

"I'm sorry, our automated system is unavailable. Please visit our website."

What an awful company.
 
R

RoninChaos

Member
I love how fucking tone deaf Equifax is. From having to change the language about not getting sued, not charging for credit freezes, reporting the breach a MONTH after it happened, to having people sell of their stock when the breach was uncovered, it's shocking to me how fucking out of touch these people are. These guys have so much data on people in America, data that most americans didn't have a choice in giving them, and they allowed that data to be stolen by their lax security. How the FUCK did no one go "We need to get in front of this and not do ANY of this stupid shit?" Christ.
 
V

Very Berry Sunday

Member
It cost $10 to freeze, and another $10 to unfreeze credit in California if we aren't victims of ID theft?

Why not $0? All of us are going to be victims soon.
 
C

CopperPuppy

Member
The Experian fraud alert page is always stuck at "Loading..." for me.

Anyone else have this problem? I've tried two browsers so I don't think compatibility is the problem.
 
Z

Zach

Member
Very Berry Sunday said:
It cost $10 to freeze, and another $10 to unfreeze credit in California if we aren't victims of ID theft?

Why not $0? All of us are going to be victims soon.
Click to expand...

A security breach is apparently considered less serious than true identity theft. I believe with a police report (for actual identity theft), you would be able to have these services done for free.

But hey, I'm with you. This sucks and Equifax should foot the bill for lifelong protection. I guess we'll have to wait and see if the government feels the same way.
 
H

hayejin

Member
Maybe already posted but I love the Wikipedia update on equifax.

Wikipedia said:
Equifax Inc. is an unsecure consumer credit reporting agency. Equifax collects, aggregates, and fails to protect the information of over 800 million individual consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide.
Click to expand...
 
RedAssedApe

RedAssedApe

Banned
Zach said:
A security breach is apparently considered less serious than true identity theft. I believe with a police report (for actual identity theft), you would be able to have these services done for free.

But hey, I'm with you. This sucks and Equifax should foot the bill for lifelong protection. I guess we'll have to wait and see if the government feels the same way.
Click to expand...

I'm still getting e-mails from AllClearID Identity Theft monitoring which I was provided with from Sony when PSN was breached back in 2011.

The least Equifax could do is provide free service to all those affected. I'm still waiting for the CEO presser where he comes on stage and bows and begs forgiveness like Kaz had to :p
 
Chaplain

Chaplain

Member
Facebook PBS Interview with Nick Clements on protecting ourselves from the Equifax hack (9/13/17)

"The Equifax hack compromised over 140 million Americans' personal data, including names, addresses, phone numbers and social security numbers. We're taking your questions LIVE about this breach and steps you can take with MagnifyMoney's Nick Clements. Send us your questions in the comments."

"Nick has worked in consumer banking for nearly 15 years. Before co-creating Magnify, he ran the UK Consumer Business for Barclaycard. Prior to that, he spent most of his career at Citigroup in Risk Management. A graduate of Stanford University, he studied Economics and History."
Click to expand...
 
Z

Zackat

Member
I see I got charged by Experian but they said they couldn't feeeze my account on their website. Guess I have to call them.

Glorious.
 
mdsfx

mdsfx

Member
What a pain. Froze my credit at Equifax, TransUnion, Experian, Innovis, and Chexsystems. The big 3 took multiple attempts.
 
chekhonte

chekhonte

Member
My info appears to be safe through this breach but my wife's appears to be compromised. She asked me what she should do and I didn't have an answer.
 
J

Jams775

Member
chekhonte said:
My info appears to be safe through this breach but my wife's appears to be compromised. She asked me what she should do and I didn't have an answer.
Click to expand...

Start here I guess. I think you have to file a police report but I'm not sure.

https://www.ftc.gov/faq/consumer-protection/report-identity-theft

What's the chance these other scam artist credit bureaus will be held accountable for capitalizing on this? Edit: I felt like I was tricked into paying $20 for transunion when I went to try to lock. Then when I found out how to do it, it says sites down for maintainance. Then I went to experian to lock and they want me to fucking mail them...

This is all a giant fucking scam. I'm so pissed right now.
 
D

Dr. Feel Good

Banned
Just got notification that a hard inquiry was run on my credit through Capital One that is 100% not through me. I think I'm getting fucked on this.

In the process of freezing my credit and calling Capital One... fuck this.
 
A

ayeorkean

Member
chekhonte said:
Just google it. Equifax has a site where you can check.
Click to expand...

5pnCDjg.jpg


The checker, hosted by TrustedID (a subsidiary of Equifax) that millions of users are checking to see if their private information has been stolen doesn't appear to be properly validating entries.

In other words: it is giving out incorrect answers.

Earlier, in a tweet from a tipster, we noticed that you can enter some clearly incorrect information into the checker. We entered "Test" as the surname and "123456" as the social security number.

The system validated the entry and said that the person "may have been impacted."

It's possible that there are several test entries in the database used to validate consumers' data.

But the problem with the checker validating a seemingly random surname and social security number means that it's impossible to know for sure if the checker is returning accurate information when an actual victim puts in their information.

...

"That issue is now resolved, and we encourage those consumers to revisit the site to receive a response that clarifies their status," the spokesperson said.
Click to expand...
http://www.zdnet.com/article/we-tested-equifax-data-breach-checker-it-is-basically-useless/
 
P

Polishin8r

Member
So me and my wife are looking to buy a house in the next 1-4 months ..a credit freeze would prevent us from getting a loan at a bank?
 
V

Very Berry Sunday

Member
greatestjediever said:
It isn't. It has a list of SSN/names that aren't effected. If you put a name/SSN that isn't found, it presumes you've been effected. Hence why things like test names and SSNs return a message that you may have been effected.
Click to expand...


Where is it? If I put in information, will that mean I won't be able to be involved in a class action law suit?
 
A

Ashhong

Member
I have a question. You freeze your credit for now, and then what? What's to stop these hackers from using our info in a year or so?
 
P

Polishin8r

Member
epmode said:
You'd have to temporarily lift the freeze begore they run the credit check.
Click to expand...
So I would need to do that for each of the agancies or the bank would tell me which one they would pull the credit history from?

And I would need to pay a fee to do that too right?
 
Slayer-33

Slayer-33

Liverpool-2
Ashhong said:
So then we have to keep our credit frozen for the rest of our lives and unfreeze manually every time we need to do something? Mother fuckers.
Click to expand...

Sucks donkey shit but tbh keeping a freeze on everything doesn't sound like a bad idea. Just keep your pin safe to lift or remove it and you'll be at peace. I have enough credit lines so I don't see how this will bug me much.. Having my personal info out there is what really sucks.

Fuck Equifax
 
G

greatestjediever

Member
Very Berry Sunday said:
Where is it? If I put in information, will that mean I won't be able to be involved in a class action law suit?
Click to expand...

It’s the www.equifaxsecurity2017.com site that’s been mentioned before. And no, signing up won’t affect your eligibity for entering a class action. It was boiler plate terms and conditions for the TrustedID application that they use for the check that they didn’t update to reflect its usage in the hack. They’ve since updated it (probably due to massive pressure from AGs and the public) and removed that section of the terms out.

Either way, in general you should probably operate with the idea that your information has been leaked - whether by Equifax, or by any of the hundreds of other businesses that exchange your information on the regular. You can use free services like Credit Karma to get notified when things happen to your credit and/or you can go the route of freezing credit like many of the people here are doing.
 
Zoe

Zoe

Member
For everybody freezing your files, just keep in mind it doesn't end there. Tax fraud is also a huge risk.
 
E

epmode

Member
Ashhong said:
So then we have to keep our credit frozen for the rest of our lives and unfreeze manually every time we need to do something?
Click to expand...
Yep. Honestly, it was a good idea even before this breach.

Our information is ridiculously vulnerable, what with all of the other hacks over the last few years. Until the government gets off its ass and forces companies to rely on 2FA or something instead of treating our SSN as a primary key, a credit freeze will prevent lots of identity theft.

Zoe said:
For everybody freezing your files, just keep in mind it doesn't end there. Tax fraud is also a huge risk.
Click to expand...

Could you explain how that works and what we can do to prevent it?
 
Zoe

Zoe

Member
epmode said:
Could you explain how that works and what we can do to prevent it?
Click to expand...

SSN's get used in order to steal tax returns. The only way to really prevent it is to file your taxes immediately so that any further e-returns can't get accepted.
 
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