How to Protect Yourself from the World's Biggest Data Breach

[Siniri]

Equifax, a U.S.-based credit reporting company, had a data breach of 140+ million people's private information (name, birth date, social security number, current and prior addresses - basically everything an identity theft would need to know to get credit in your name). This affects 2/3 American adults, but also people in Canada and Europe (and possibly elsewhere).

Clark Howard, an American consumer advocate, has created a guide to help you protect yourself. I recommend immediately taking the steps he suggests.

Also, there are new password guidelines from the experts. Basically, stick to lowercase letters, but make longer passwords using memorable phrases (in English, or in another language you speak, because why not?). They say you don't need to change them regularly, but I think it's still a good idea to do so on Neopets until they finally fix their security issues.

BlueEdit: Combined double post

[Pickles]

Well, ironically enough, I wasn't hacked, but Mr. P was (according to the quick check). He believes this might be because he had signed in at some point to monitor our credit more closely before we bought the house. However, since we both have other non-Equifax fraud monitoring services already (one of which caught someone trying to get credit in our then-2-year-old's name), I'm not overly worried about it.

Be aware that while you can check to see if you were likely affected, I wouldn't actually enroll in the "free monitoring service" as it is ambiguous as to whether or not you'll lose the right to participate in a class action lawsuit, etc. This may or may not be true, but I'd be wary of it for now. The credit freeze/alternative monitoring would probably be the best route to go.

[Siniri]

Right. Clark Howard recommends NOT signing up for what Equifax offers, because a condition of signing up for it is waiving your rights to any further compensation (e.g., in a class-action lawsuit). He also says that people who have checked multiple times have gotten different results at different times as to whether their data was compromised, so he recommends assuming it was.

When my data was compromised in the big federal government breach a few years ago, they gave me free monitoring for a certain amount of time without me having to do anything. That should be required by law. Instead, a GA Congressional representative (in the district where Equifax is located), while this scandal was starting to break, sponsored a bill to protect Equifax and similar companies from liability if they experience a data breach. Talk about putting corporations over constituents! Hopefully this scandal will keep that bill from becoming law, and maybe more consumer protections will be put in place.

At this point, I figure I may as well freeze my credit since I have no plans to take any credit out anytime soon.

[Blue]

I've been affected a couple of times. First time was ~15 years ago when I went to re-finance - ding on my credit that was not mine. Refi did not go well. In that case, it was due to a lazy credit collection agency who could not find the right person and somehow attached it to my credit. I was very fortunate that the agency was local. I went there in person and refused to leave until they fixed it. It still took about 2 years to get my credit straightened out. I put additional restrictions on my credit at that time and signed up for a credit monitoring service. After multiple years without an issue, I dropped that service and now use AAA's free monitoring service. I get a monthly email that says "no activity".

Recently, I had one of my credit union accounts wiped out. They notified me of suspicious activity well after the crooks spent nearly $7k on nice hotels and stuff. The real kicker here is that they compromised my ATM card that I had NEVER used. Not once. The only times it had ever come out of my wallet was for ID Confirmation within the CU branch office when making a loan payment in person. Inside job? The fraud started right after a statement closing date, so I had no knowledge and would not have noticed until my next statement came. Thankfully, I got all of my money back quickly.