Equifax breached ... 140 million accounts. The worse breach in history.

That data was stolen already so why should I care? Sure they’re charging 600BTC for it now, but one of those purchasers will put it up in a torrent pretty soon.

True, but once it gets out of the credit industry, the data will start to get combined with other personal details. If Facebook gets to combine their social data, or Apple gets to add your face recognition and digital usage data, or a national political Committee gets to merge it with their voter and preference data…

They already had the ability to purchase and integrate that data. That is, in fact, Equifax’s core business.

Well, I maybe I am uninformed or naive, but I wouldn’t think selling their entire database is part of their business plan. Surely they just sell/rent data “slices” for specific results matching queries, or certain subsets. Giving anyone the FULL dataset is giving away the literal golden goose unless timeliness is a central factor.

Yes, of course. They licensed parts of their data for limited time periods. But I don’t care if Equifax goes out of business-- in fact, I hope they do, and their wives leave them and teach their kids to hate them.

So the shit has begun.

My wife got a letter from Lowe’s today saying they need more info to process our Lowe’s credit card request. Which we never made.

We called, Lowe’s confirmed the application was made in her name, with her SS#. At least they put a roadblock on the way.

I am still fighting to get through to the last 2 agencies to freeze her accounts (Transunion and Innovis)

edit - all 4 sites are completely useless now. They don’t even open past their home pages peddling services. No phone numbers or links to report a real fraud.

edit 2 - Was easy to report the fraud to TransUnion via the telephone number that Lowes gave us to call, and we froze her credit report for that agency while on there as well. It only took a real fraud to get through to get the secret password to enter !

Try this link : https://www.alerts.equifax.com/AutoFraud_Online/jsp/fraudAlert.jsp

It was the only thing I could get working last night, and it looks like it still is now…

Freezing your credit is nearly impossible:

  • Equifax errors out, every time (try again later)
  • Experian’s site has broken links for freezes (page not found)
  • Transunion worked – it was easy and free, though I did have to give them my mobile number (which I am sure they will sell)

Effing hate these companies. If Trump ran for reelection on a platform of hanging their executives, I’d think about it.

Everyone seems to have a different experience. I just breezed through Experian.

Also did one report. All clean other than one month with really bizarre entries for one of my credit cards (it even says it was foreclosed during that month a couple of years ago - but it also tracks my perfect payment record for the entire period up through the present). Computer glitches in credit reports - such a warm fuzzy feeling of confidence in the system.

Any pros or cons of “Trueidentity” from TransUnion?

Last step of Experian gave me Service Unavailable lol

Haven’t been able to get through a freeze anywhere yet without errors… :/

Those of you having issues using the freeze webforms: monitor your balances closely. Well, everyone probably should. I think some of the double-charge reports I’m hearing about (and that I experienced with TransUnion) may be linked to initial failures during multiple attempts. Also heard a few reports of being auto-enrolled in the $19.95/mo credit protection scam. After some thought, I decided to just eat it because $10 is worth not having them screw me again in some way.

So I’ve been bringing this up regularly with family, friends and co-workers, and it’s rather shocking how ignorant and nonchalant/skeptical people are about this, even after you lay it all out. Two high-profile directors scoffed and said they didn’t care what people did with their data, one said the same but then said he trusted the credit protection system, and a third seemed to glean the importance of freezing his credit but decided he wouldn’t be able to do it because he’s computer phobic and didn’t want to fill out forms.

Also chatted with my adult daughter and began what will probably be the beginning of a mini harassment campaign. I guess if she still hasn’t done it in a few weeks I’ll just attempt to do it myself on her behalf, which makes me feel uncomfortable on a couple of levels.

The amount consumers don’t care is the same reason why Equifax is going to walk away from this largely unscathed. Oh, they’ll pay a decently large fine, settle some class action lawsuits, and some executives will get fired. But I’d be willing to bet that in 6 months their stock price will be right back up where it was before news of the breach.

They don’t give a shit about consumers because we’re not their customers, and there’s no way a Republican-controlled Congress is going to meaningfully regulate an industry that pours millions into their campaign coffers.

I tend to unfortunately agree, but if things start snowballing downhill I expect that may change. My wife and I are in our 50’s and have NEVER had an identity theft attempted on us…only 2 credit card frauds I remember until now, and easily remedied. But now they have her SS#. And everywhere we’ve lived for 30 years. And (I didn’t know this until last week) the license plates of our cars. And the names of our grown children. I think this is going to become a crisis for many people, and heads will (should?) roll. Once a critical mass of Republican voters are cleaned out, I’m figuring Congress will finally act.

I’ve never really worried about ID theft before…I’m one in 200 million or so… I pay cash at Target …I have one credit card and monitor it weekly…what are the odds? Now my wife and I are full frontal, with good credit scores, and it only took them a couple of weeks to lock onto us. Whoever has this info is moving fast. We were lucky and dodged their first bullet.

I am still stuck with Trans Union. Every time I hit the freeze button, it errors out. There are is no contact information on that site I can find. I guess Ill have to go the pay route with them because their free option doesn’t work.

Anyone ever sign up for Lifelock? I recall their ads back in the day… Or is there another alternative?

Call them.

According to what I’ve read, nearly all of those protection services are crap. The thing to do is freeze your credit on all the services and then keep an eye on things yourself.

Yeah, we covered that much earlier in the thread. They’re all largely useless. They might alert you after someone steals your identity and save you should effort fixing the problem, but it will still be a major hassle. The only way to protect yourself is to freeze your credit, period.

And yes, that is much more difficult today than it would have been last month because almost nobody other than opsec nerds like myself and victims of identity theft froze their credit before Equifucked everybody.