Equifax (1 of 3 credit reporting agencies) hacked; potentially 143M Americans affected (also some Brits & Canadians)

[Woz]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/09/07/hackers-steal-personal-data-for-143-million-americans-from-credit-reporting-agency-equifax/

Quote

Criminal hackers gained access to files that include the sensitive personal data — Social Security numbers, birth dates and home addresses — of 143 million Americans by penetrating a Web-based application for Equifax, the credit reporting agency said Thursday.

The breach, which the company said began in May, was discovered in July. Though Equifax said in a statement that “core database” were not penetrated, the attackers did gain access to a wide range of data for what appears to be a majority of American adults and some British and Canadian consumers as well.

 

Congrats folks, we might now qualify for free credit monitoring services from one of the credit reporting agencies because they couldn't handle security correctly! Wheeeeeeee!

#facepalm

[Forge]

Yikes. Looks like I'll be keeping an eye on my credit pretty closely. 

[ramssuperbowl99]

 

Seriously though, that's infuriating. It should not be hard to keep databases private in this age of 2-layer authentication and encryption.

[ET80]

Wow. That's really not good. 

[Csonka Trucks]

Oh

[bucsfan333]

While they're in there, can they add a few points to my credit score?

[Ty21]

My score is pretty close to being in the 400s so if they are able to do anything with it I can't, have at it lol. 

P.S. plz erase my medical bill debts 

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

Man I've worked hard at getting the credit score I have, ima be pissd if this goofs with it.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

1 hour ago, Tyty said:

My score is pretty close to being in the 400s so if they are able to do anything with it I can't, have at it lol. 

P.S. plz erase my medical bill debts 

Are they significant?

Not trying to be a jerk in any way, but if you have a ton of debt, no job atm, and poor credit now, have you considered bankruptcy?

[Ty21]

7 minutes ago, LETSGOBROWNIES said:

Are they significant?

Not trying to be a jerk in any way, but if you have a ton of debt, no job atm, and poor credit now, have you considered bankruptcy?

You don't sound like a jerk. I don't get offended on here anyway unless someone makes fun of my sunburned children. 

I wouldn't call it substantial but it's stacking up. I have $4k in collections and who knows how much adding up from the last two years because my doctor I see monthly costs $300+ per visit and apparently my insurance ran out/I became ineligible for it and I'm on the hook for all the appointments now. So ballpark I'd say I'll end up owing somewhere around $10k. 

I'm (hopefully) about to get a job after being disabled for four years and ideally I'll be putting maybe $50-100 a paycheck towards the mountain of debt. 

I honestly don't know enough about bankruptcy to have considered it yet. 

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

3 minutes ago, Tyty said:

You don't sound like a jerk. I don't get offended on here anyway unless someone makes fun of my sunburned children. 

I wouldn't call it substantial but it's stacking up. I have $4k in collections and who knows how much adding up from the last two years because my doctor I see monthly costs $300+ per visit and apparently my insurance ran out/I became ineligible for it and I'm on the hook for all the appointments now. So ballpark I'd say I'll end up owing somewhere around $10k. 

I'm (hopefully) about to get a job after being disabled for four years and ideally I'll be putting maybe $50-100 a paycheck towards the mountain of debt. 

I honestly don't know enough about bankruptcy to have considered it yet. 

I'm glad to hear you're doing better, hopefully nothing but smooth sailing from here on.

Surely there's an attorney on here who could at least cover the broad strokes for you, if you're interested.

[Pats#1]

I'm gonna probably be more pissed if someone screws up my credit than if they steal some CC numbers or something....been working on getting that thing to where it's at for 11 years now.

 

Time to get LifeLock or something I guess.

[ramssuperbowl99]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/three-equifax-executives-sold-stock-before-revealing-cyber-hack

"The credit-reporting service said late Thursday in a statement that it discovered the intrusion on July 29. Regulatory filings show that three days later, Chief Financial Officer John Gamble sold shares worth $946,374 and Joseph Loughran, president of U.S. information solutions, exercised options to dispose of stock worth $584,099. Rodolfo Ploder, president of workforce solutions, sold $250,458 of stock on Aug. 2. None of the filings lists the transactions as being part of 10b5-1 scheduled trading plans.

The three “sold a small percentage of their Equifax shares,” Ines Gutzmer, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based company, said in an emailed statement. They “had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time.”"

 

Thanks for waiting a month to tell us Equifax. And what we should do with those 3 executives:

https://giphy.com/media/3o6ZtpLbsEhxFHcaRi/giphy.gif

[theJ]

14 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

The three “sold a small percentage of their Equifax shares,” Ines Gutzmer, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based company, said in an emailed statement. They “had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time.”"

Haha yeah right.  Slimy.

[ramssuperbowl99]

6 minutes ago, theJ said:

Haha yeah right.  Slimy.

Oh no it's completely reasonable that a company wouldn't tell any of it's management that they just managed to lose basically every adult with a credit card's information. It's also completely reasonable that 3 separate executives would also just randomly decide to sell a bunch of stock right after that catastrophic event for the company that they needed to be informed of immediately.

Seriously, set those *** hats adrift.