One of the main national credit reporting agencies, Equifax, announced a breach yesterday with over 150 million records exposed. That is you. And that is ME. ( I checked )
Everyone needs to be super alert with their accounts now. The hackers have everything they need to compromise most of your accounts ( Your bank account, your cable TV provider, your Facebook account, your health insurance account, they can take out a mortgage in your name, start a line of credit in your name).
Here is what they have on you:
- Name
- Address
- Every address you have ever had
- All credit inquiries you have ever made
- Social Security Number
- Birth date
- All accounts in collections you have ever had
- All judgements against you
- Every credit card you have
- Every line of credit you have
- Every bank you have an account at
- Your credit score
- Your payment histories
- The list goes on…
To boot, this can be combined with every other data set available from every other breach at any other place you had an account with that is for sale on the dark web.
The real problem is that it is very easy to get into all of your accounts, and reset the passwords and change account details because they ARE YOU now. Every piece of authentication information an account representative would ask, THEY HAVE.
The amount of power these punks have over all of us is insane. Here is what I advise:
- Make sure that your bank requires that you tell them your ATM card number when you call in. If they don’t, tell them to add that and other layers of security to your account. Be worried that your money will evaporate.
- Call your mobile phone service provider and make sure you they ask you for a PIN. AT&T does this already but I’m not sure about Verizon or Virgin Mobile, etc.
- Enable two factor authentication on all of your accounts.
- Keep close tabs on, or even FREEZE your credit with Experian, TransUnion and the spectacular producer of this fine mess. Its free. It may be hard to get through to Equifax, though. They might be a bit swamped.
- Understand that you are highly vulnerable to being impersonated on a variety of levels now.
- If you have an Equifax account and that password is shared with any other of your accounts, change that password. Then smack yourself for sharing passwords among accounts.
- If you go to the emergency website set up by Equifax to see if you have been breached, attack yourself and don’t do that. Equifax is poison and you’re just submitting more information to the hackers. If you sign up for their credit monitoring service, this abdicates you from joining the class action lawsuit against them where I imagine that they will be liable for more money than they are worth as a company. If you sign up for credit monitoring, don’t do it through them.Ugh. I was wondering why my credit score was so high..
Gods help us all. Make no mistake, Equifax has caused severe harm to the entire country. They have put the sheep into the hungry wolves den. Now a bunch of NASA engineers are going to have to sit around and figure out ways for people to prove that they are themselves without using any of the exposed information. Yeesh..I bet its also time to knock on Experian’s door… and TransUnion’s as well and see if they have been leaving their doors unlocked at night…