Equifax Data Breach
Equifax, one of the three largest credit monitoring bureaus in the US, announced the discovery of a data breach on Sept. 7th, 2017. 143 million consumers may have been affected.
The following customer data was exposed:
- Social Security numbers
- Birth dates
- Names
- Addresses
To help you determine if your personal information was compromised, Equifax set up a website:
You can learn more about the incident and start taking precautions if you were one of the 143 million impacted consumers.
To further protect yourself from future incidents, here are a few additional tips:
- Pull your credit report. https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action
- Sign up for credit monitoring service (but be aware of notifications overload!)
- If you’re really worried, you can always sign-up for a Credit Freeze
Contact each of the nationwide credit reporting companies:
Equifax — 1-800-349-9960 or equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/credit-freeze
Experian — 1-888-397-3742 or http://www.experian.com/consumer-products/creditlock.html
TransUnion — 1-888-909-8872 or https://www.transunion.com/freeze
- Set up for Two-Factor Authentication for: mobile apps that have sensitive data, financial accounts, and e-mail accounts.
- Secure your phone with a password
Whether you are a victim of this data breach or not, use these tips to be prepared for the next one by protecting your identity and personal information.
