Data Breach Compromises Millions

Good morning Page, Arizona!

LPNN does not know if you have heard about the Equifax cybersecurity breach and what you can do to protect your information, here is a bit of what has happened.

Yesterday, September 8, 2017, Equifax publicly announced that they had been the victims of a cybersecurity breach. This breach occurred between May and July of this year, and Equifax became aware of it on July 29.

Equifax is estimating that approximately 143 million people may have been affected, and their information collected, this includes information from those within the U.S., Canada, and the UK. To date, no evidence has been found that consumers in other than those three countries have been compromised. Equifax states that since July 29, the company has been working with law enforcement agencies to identify and those who were involved in the breach. They have also been working with Canadian and UK regulators to identify what the next steps will be.

According to Equifax, the following information has been compromised by this breach:

Names, addresses, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, birth dates, approximately 200,000 credit card numbers, and approximately 145,000 dispute files which contain personal information we accessed as well. Those whose information was accessed via dispute files will be receiving a notice from Equifax in the mail.

Equifax is claiming that they have found no evidence the “core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases were compromised”. While they don’t specify as to what other databases were accessed, other than those that hold dispute files, LPNN suggests checking to ensure your information has not been potentially compromised.

In the wake of this, Equifax has set up an information website where you can find out more, and sign up for free extra monitoring for a year. Equifax does state that you must sign up for it by November 27 of this year, but the only way you qualify is if your information was compromised. Equifax also has a tool for that as well; you key in your last name and the last six of your social and voila! They let you know. If you want the one year monitoring, you then choose that option and they provide you and enrollment date. You are to remember that date, since they will not be providing you a reminder, and that is the earliest you are able to sign up for the monitoring service.

If you want to know more or want to see if your information was possibly compromised, here are the links for Equifax’s website dedicated for this situation.

Main site: https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/

Consumer notice: https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/consumer-notice/

Check your potential impact (status): https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/potential-impact/