Equifax Betrays Us All

“If you have a credit report, chances are you may be in this breach. The chances are much better than 50 percent.”

"...hackers had gained access to company data that potentially compromised sensitive information for 143 million American consumers, including Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers." ... "In addition to the other material, hackers were also able to retrieve names, birth dates and addresses. Credit card numbers for 209,000 consumers were stolen, while documents with personal information used in disputes for 182,000 people were also taken." - New York Times, Sept. 7, 2017

Not only did Equifax allow such a shocking breach to happen, it sat on the information from July 29 to September 7.

Since Equifax discovered its failure, it has continued to behave abominably, including allowing three of their execs to sell a portion (small, by the metrics of the megawealthy) of company stock prior to the disclosure.

As a silver lining of sorts, this scandal exposed some of Equifax's other skeeziness, namely the clause in its terms of service, apparently last updated well before the breach, that forces you to waive your right to join in a class action lawsuit.

Nice, right?

What can we do to protect ourselves?

Not much, but here are a couple of things:

• keep an eye on our "free annual credit report,"

• keep an eye on our credit score (creditkarma is good for this.)

• sign up for Equifax's own attempt to clean up their mess. (So far all it gets me is a notice saying my "protection" will start on 9/12.)