Massive Data Breach
 

This story emerged about the time Hurricane Irma was bearing down on the Caribbean and FL... which probably caused it to go unnoticed by many people.


You can easily find news stories about what happened.

Below is a link to an article on the matter from someone at the Federal Trade Commission


Article

I noticed it. Did you notice that shortly thereafter, two top executives retired? How about firing them for gross neglect. Credit bureaus have been screwing consumers for decades with virtually no oversight and accountable to no one.

I have already filed blocks on two bureaus. However, when I tried to file blocks on Experian, I got stupid error messages. And of course, it's impossible to contact them by phone with all that's going on.

Let the lawsuits begin!

I did not even bother with phone or the web, I just sent certified letters for credit freezes to all 3 credit bureaus.

Didn't they sell lots of stock before the news went public?

Yes they did...

This breach was well publicized. What caused me to pause was that Equifax suggested you could visit their website to determine if you were one of the 143 million names breached. Well if these name are already on their website Equifax already knows because they complied the list and since they know why are they not moving to protect the names on the list they created?
Geezzz

I posted the answer to this question already, but for convenience, I'm happy to post it again:

Credit bureaus have been screwing consumers for decades with virtually no oversight and accountable to no one.

What a coincidence about the timing of the Equifax stock sale. :ohdear:

A few days after this news came out, I put a freeze on my credit reports with the big 3 credit agencies. Now I have to remember to keep the PIN numbers for each of the 3 agencies in a safe place when I need to have my credit report unfrozen for some reason. :( And going forward I have to be more diligent about getting my credit reports from the big 3 every 4 months on a rotating schedule.

I read some of the comments to this FTC article. One commenter never heard of Equifax, another commenter said he or she never signed up for Equifax. Hard to believe someone over the age of 30 has no knowledge of how credit agencies operate. And for the commenter who said "go back to using cash, send money orders to pay all bills, get off the grid" -- that's really not a workable solution for most of us.