Equifax Hacked - 143 Million Users Data Exposed

[jllundqu]

Yeah that sucks. What's the point of even keeping your data like SSN secret anymore?

https://apnews.com/694a86732e074d4a9...&utm_medium=AP

ATLANTA (AP) — Credit monitoring company Equifax says a breach exposed social security numbers and other data from about 143 million Americans.

The Atlanta-based company said Thursday that “criminals” exploited a U.S. website application to access files between mid-May and July of this year.

It said consumers’ names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers were exposed. Credit card numbers for about 209,000 U.S. consumers were also accessed.

The company said hackers also accessed some “limited personal information” from British and Canadian residents.

Equifax said it doesn’t believe that any consumers from other countries were affected.

[devil21]

Interesting!

[phill4paul]

Well that was a major security breach $#@! up. It's gonna cost them, anyone smell class action lawsuit?

[devil21]

Let's see if there's msm reports in the near future about major "identity theft" cases arising out of this...

[dannno]

Let's see if there's msm reports in the near future about major "identity theft" cases arising out of this...

Fortunately equifax helps consumers protect themselves against identify theft.

[Krugminator2]

Probably worth buying Symantec for a pop. They are the parent company of Lifelock.

[devil21]

Probably worth buying Symantec for a pop. They are the parent company of Lifelock.

Haha there's a Lifelock commercial on tv right now. Such a load of bull$#@!. "Your" credit, "your" identity, "your" credit cards, etc.

[DamianTV]

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/09...onal-info-ever

The breach Equifax reported Thursday is very possibly is the most severe of all for a simple reason: the breath-taking amount of highly sensitive data it handed over to criminals. Dan Goodin of ArsTechnica writes:

By providing full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and, in some cases, driver license numbers, it provided most of the information banks, insurance companies, and other businesses use to confirm consumers are who they claim to be. The theft, by criminals who exploited a security flaw on the Equifax website, opens the troubling prospect the data is now in the hands of hostile governments, criminal gangs, or both and will remain so indefinitely. Hacks hitting Yahoo and other sites, by contrast, may have breached more accounts, but the severity of the personal data was generally more limited. And in most cases the damage could be contained by changing a password or getting a new credit card number. What's more, the 143 million US people Equifax said were potentially affected accounts for roughly 44 percent of the population. When children and people without credit histories are removed, the proportion becomes even bigger. That means well more than half of all US residents who rely the most on bank loans and credit cards are now at a significantly higher risk of fraud and will remain so for years to come. Besides being used to take out loans in other people's names, the data could be abused by hostile governments to, say, tease out new information about people with security clearances, especially in light of the 2015 hack on the US Office of Personnel Management, which exposed highly sensitive data on 3.2 million federal employees, both current and retired.

Meanwhile, if you accept Equifax's paltry "help" you forfeit the right to sue the company, it has said. In its policy, Equifax also states that it won't be helping its customers fix hack-related problems.

Bloomberg reported on Friday that a class action seeking to represent 143 million consumers has been filed, and it alleges the company didn't spend enough on protecting data. The class-action -- filed by the firm Olsen Daines PC along with Geragos & Geragos, a celebrity law firm known for blockbuster class actions -- will seek as much as $70 billion in damages nationally.

[spudea]

how do we hold them responsible, sue them out of business?

[jllundqu]

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...s-Data-Exposed

[jllundqu]

Seriously... If you add up all the major breaches that have happened in recent past, there isn't a person left in the country that doesn't have ALL their personal/banking info on the web for sale somewhere.

Your Credit/Debit Cards
Your SSN
Your DOB
Your Medical History
Your Credit History
Your Bank Accounts
Your Retirement Accounts

It's ALL been breached.

[jllundqu]

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/09...onal-info-ever

70 billion divided by 143 million minus attorney fees equals about 20 bucks per person.... hehe

[dannno]

70 billion divided by 143 million minus attorney fees equals about 20 bucks per person.... hehe

Ya but most people will probably signup for their 1 year free service..

I didn't know people's SS changed every year.

[Jan2017]

They call us Equifax "customers",
but those credit reporting agencies collect (steal) all that info (even if erroneous) that we don't really give them ourselves, usually.

[Swordsmyth]

PSA: no matter what, Equifax may tell you you've been impacted by the hack

In what is an unconscionable move by the credit report company, the checker site, hosted by Equifax product TrustID, seems to be telling people at random they may have been affected by the data breach.
I started noticing most people who'd tested out the site in my Facebook and Twitter feeds had been given the message that they may have been part of the millions who's information was affected. It stood to reason that was likely, given the scope of the leak would affect possibly one out every two people I know in the country.
However, I then decided to try it out for myself. First, I entered my real information...and received the bad news.
View photos



"Based on the information provided, we believe that your personal information may have been impacted by this incident," the site said.
I was then encouraged on the next line to continue my enrollment in TrustedID Premier. I was not aware I was enrolling in anything simply by giving my information. I had been instructed to add my last name and the last six digits of my Social Security number only to find out if I'd been impacted.
So then I decided to test the system with a different last name and six random numbers. I used the more popular English spelling of my last name for this purpose, entering "Burr" instead of "Buhr" and entered six random numbers I don't even remember now.
View photos



Sure enough, this made-up person had also been impacted. I tried it over and over again and got the same message. The only time I did not get the message I'd been impacted was when I entered "Elmo" as the last name and "123456" as my Social Security number.
Some of my colleagues also tried to fool the system and came up with different outcomes. Sometimes, after entering a made-up name, the site said they had been impacted. A few times it said they were not.
Others have tweeted they received different answers after entering the same information.
The assignment seems random. But, nevertheless, they were still asked to continue enrolling in TrustID.
What this means is not only are none of the last names tied to your Social Security number, but there's no way to tell if you were really impacted.
It's clear Equifax's goal isn't to protect the consumer or bring them vital information. It's to get you to sign up for its revenue-generating product TrustID.

More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/psa-n...010153057.html

[kpitcher]

The last I knew the law says any credit card breach could be a fine of up to $10,000 each. When that went into effect I stopped housing my customer's credit cards and went with a 3rd party.

Since then all these big breaches have only paid a few bucks per card. They must keep those laws on the books for the little companies.

[Weston White]

Haha there's a Lifelock commercial on tv right now. Such a load of bull$#@!. "Your" credit, "your" identity, "your" credit cards, etc.

https://mfi-miami.com/2016/09/rudy-giuliani/

[devil21]

[h=1]
It's clear Equifax's goal isn't to protect the consumer or bring them vital information. It's to get you to sign up for its revenue-generating product TrustID.

More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/psa-n...010153057.html

Or to get you to agree to some change in legal terms of credit use. Perhaps both. They stick stuff into the Agreements, knowing people will be spooked by the news and won't read the Agreement they are binding themselves to. I'll go read the Agreement to see what fresh $#@!ery is in it. Definitely not agreeing to it though!

eta: I didn't notice anything too egregious, though the terms do require that "You" again accept that the information contained in the report is "you", instead of the truth that the all capital letter name and SS# are not you at all and are instead various bank and government property.

[William Tell]

It was bound to happen. And worse will no doubt, progress sucks and the digital age sucks on a whole new level.

[jllundqu]

Funny how the Equifax bosses all sold millions in stock before the info went public, then they have the balls to say 'it's not related'

[Krugminator2]

Funny how the Equifax bosses all sold millions in stock before the info went public, then they have the balls to say 'it's not related'

It isn't as blatantly obvious as people are making it out to be. http://openinsider.com/search?q=efx I wouldn't be surprised if the breech factored into their decision but I don't see anyway it could be proven.

3 people sold shares and all three had been selling previously. The CFO sold 14,000 shares in May then 6500 three days after the breech was discovered. Usually there are set windows for people to sell. 3 people had sold on the same date in August but 6 had sold on the same day in March. One of those people has been exercising options frequently going back to 2014. I count 5 insider sales from the third person.

[Natural Citizen]

Funny how the Equifax bosses all sold millions in stock before the info went public, then they have the balls to say 'it's not related'

eeeeyep.

[Southron]

Researcher Kenneth White discovered a link in the source code on the Equifax consumer sign-in page that pointed to Netscape , a web browser that was discontinued in 2008.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasb.../#16c4618a677c

[enhanced_deficit]

Very smart people at EQFX keep making massive blunders.

[dannno]

[devil21]

Netscape predicted Planet X doom?

[specsaregood]

I put this in another thread, but its so good I'll crosspost it.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-m-93069a/


http://www.marketwatch.com/(S(rnrsyd...cer-2017-09-15

I was tipped off to this by a contact on Twitter. There has been very little coverage so far of Susan Mauldin’s background and training. Given the ongoing disaster of the hack and Equifax’s handling of the affair, the media spotlight has so far been elsewhere.

Reporting by a few tech-savvy blogs has found that as soon as the Equifax data breach became public, someone began to scrub the internet of information about Mauldin.

Her LinkedIn page was made private and her last name replaced with “M.” Two videos of interviews with Mauldin have been removed from YouTube. A podcast of an interview has also been taken down.

Unhappily for the scrubbers, the internet archives some material and a transcript of one interview has survived .

[Southron]

This is starting to look more and more like criminal negligence. The security vulnerability that was exploited was patched in March by Apache but not applied by Equifax.

https://threatpost.com/equifax-confi...breach/127975/

[timosman]

[dannno]

Wow, Tim has had a really tough week.. first the Ted Cruz twitter scandal, now this