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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scams Victimizing Seniors

#idtheft It comes around periodically. A scam where a senior citizen gets a phone call from either a young person claiming to be a grandson, or someone who says they are an attorney representing the grandson, saying that the grandparent needs to wire some money to bail out the grandchild. Because of social media posting, it isn't difficult for the scammer to get enough personal information to make the scam believable.  Many seniors get taken for thousands of dollars with this scam.  If you get such a call, investigate! Don't promise to wire any money until you can talk to the parents.  Maybe not even then.  Don't become a victim. Another telephone scam that hits seniors is someone representing Medicare or the IRS calls to say that someone has fraudulently used the senior's information, then asks to verify the Social Security Number.  Understand that these agencies never call.  You will get a letter instead.  Always refuse to cooperate, then call the...
Read more

Meltdown and Spectre Viruses! Serious!

In my last posting, I mention about a CPU chip flaw in nearly all computers -- Apple, Google, and Windows alike -- that can be exploited by quasi-viruses called Meltdown and  Spectre that steal data from devices. The theft process is very complicated and technical, so if you want to know the details, search for it. I'm avoiding that here. Suffice it to say that this is a serious enough exposure that every chip maker, computer maker, and browser developer is working on solutions, and will likely be a rollout of solutions over time.  Already, Microsoft, Google, and Apple have released OS patches, so you need to apply these as soon as you can.  Down the road, expect even more updates. I call these exploitations "quasi-viruses" because these aren't viruses in the traditional sense and therefore aren't being picked up by regular antivirus programs. I've put a request in to PCMatic, since they block by whitelist instead of blacklist (can't install app unless...
Read more