Equifax Provides More Details of Hacked Data

In a recent letter to several congressional committees, Equifax shared that out of the 146+ million records that were hacked in last year's breach:

  • all contained consumers' dates of birth, 
  • nearly all contained Social Security Numbers, 
  • 99 million had address information, 
  • 209,000 contained credit card data including expiration dates, 
  • 38,000 contained driver's license info,
  • 3,200 contained passport information.
While some identity fraud incidents have been traced back to the Equifax breach, most of these records have not yet been used in a fraud.  However, since the data is not likely to change (other than credit card info), it is assumed that eventually the stolen information will be sold in the dark web and misused.  Just a matter of time.  My advice: do what you can to minimize your exposure and certainly stay on top of your credit reports, but since things like passports, driver's licenses, and Social Security Numbers can be used in non-financial identity fraud, you should really be subscribing to a good identity monitoring service that guarantees restoration should anything suspicious be uncovered.  My recommendation, of course, is with LegalShield's IDShield (my site: idt.nscky.com), that covers individuals for just $9.95/month or families for $24.95/month -- best bang for the buck in the market.

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