RJM62
Touchdown! Greaser!
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- Jun 15, 2007
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Geek on the Hill
I'm surprised no one has started a thread on this, so I will. Long story short, Equifax got hacked, so there's a very strong chance that your personal financial data is on the street if you live in the U.S., and some possibility if you live in Canada or the UK.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemat...h-impacts-143-million-americans/#4c6bccd4356f
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41192163
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/09/breach-at-equifax-may-impact-143m-americans/
After my own most-recent identity theft incident (which went as far as someone filing tax returns in my name as well as the more mundane sorts of fraud), I found Equifax to be an utterly incompetent company to deal with. Their Web site errored out when I first tried to apply the freeze, and their phone system was looped so I could never talk to an actual person. It also took multiple letters and the intervention of the NYS Attorney General's office for me to get the PIN associated with the security freeze. They were the most frustrating non-governmental entity I'd ever dealt with.
Experian and Trans-Union, on the other hand, were very helpful. Experian in particular bent over backwards to be helpful, even to the point of providing me with a "secret" phone number for Equifax that actually worked. I was impressed enough with Experian that I subscribed to their paid three-bureau credit-monitoring product through USAA, which costs about half the price of what it otherwise would cost, despite already having been enrolled in numerous free (and generally useless) credit-monitoring as a result of previous breaches.
ChexSystems, a low-key company that keeps data regarding things like people who bounce checks on deposit accounts, were also very helpful. I had to file a freeze with them to prevent people from opening checking or savings accounts in my name. Practically all financial institutions check to see if an applicant is on the ChexSystems **** list before allowing them to open an initial account.
Back to Equifax, I shudder to think of the effect this will have on Americans. I haven't even come close to being back to normal financially. I can't apply for a loan, buy a phone, get an insurance quote, change utility companies, or open a deposit account without planning it in advance, finding out which agency the vendor uses, and temporarily lifting the freeze so the check can be run. But I've lost count of the attempts to pull my credit, so I can't unfreeze the reports.
I also have been inundated with spam and telemarketing calls, which I believe were also due to the previous breach because my email address and telephone numbers were also compromised. Filing my routine tax returns is more complicated, as well.
In addition to ****ing off a lot of Americans, I shudder to think of the effect that this will have on the financial industry in general. Can you imagine the number of fraudulent credit applications that are going to be filed? I expect them to outnumber legitimate applications, possibly by many orders of magnitude.
I plan to call my idiot congressman again today to remind him of my last call and letter wherein I lambasted Congress for allowing the use of SSNs for credit purposes and as de facto national identity numbers. With any luck at all, he's a victim of the Equifax breach as well; so maybe the dirtbag will actually listen this time.
Rich
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leemat...h-impacts-143-million-americans/#4c6bccd4356f
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41192163
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/09/breach-at-equifax-may-impact-143m-americans/
After my own most-recent identity theft incident (which went as far as someone filing tax returns in my name as well as the more mundane sorts of fraud), I found Equifax to be an utterly incompetent company to deal with. Their Web site errored out when I first tried to apply the freeze, and their phone system was looped so I could never talk to an actual person. It also took multiple letters and the intervention of the NYS Attorney General's office for me to get the PIN associated with the security freeze. They were the most frustrating non-governmental entity I'd ever dealt with.
Experian and Trans-Union, on the other hand, were very helpful. Experian in particular bent over backwards to be helpful, even to the point of providing me with a "secret" phone number for Equifax that actually worked. I was impressed enough with Experian that I subscribed to their paid three-bureau credit-monitoring product through USAA, which costs about half the price of what it otherwise would cost, despite already having been enrolled in numerous free (and generally useless) credit-monitoring as a result of previous breaches.
ChexSystems, a low-key company that keeps data regarding things like people who bounce checks on deposit accounts, were also very helpful. I had to file a freeze with them to prevent people from opening checking or savings accounts in my name. Practically all financial institutions check to see if an applicant is on the ChexSystems **** list before allowing them to open an initial account.
Back to Equifax, I shudder to think of the effect this will have on Americans. I haven't even come close to being back to normal financially. I can't apply for a loan, buy a phone, get an insurance quote, change utility companies, or open a deposit account without planning it in advance, finding out which agency the vendor uses, and temporarily lifting the freeze so the check can be run. But I've lost count of the attempts to pull my credit, so I can't unfreeze the reports.
I also have been inundated with spam and telemarketing calls, which I believe were also due to the previous breach because my email address and telephone numbers were also compromised. Filing my routine tax returns is more complicated, as well.
In addition to ****ing off a lot of Americans, I shudder to think of the effect that this will have on the financial industry in general. Can you imagine the number of fraudulent credit applications that are going to be filed? I expect them to outnumber legitimate applications, possibly by many orders of magnitude.
I plan to call my idiot congressman again today to remind him of my last call and letter wherein I lambasted Congress for allowing the use of SSNs for credit purposes and as de facto national identity numbers. With any luck at all, he's a victim of the Equifax breach as well; so maybe the dirtbag will actually listen this time.
Rich
