Take 20 Minutes to Protect Yourself from the Equifax Data Breach

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll talk about the Equifax data breach from 2017 and the steps you should do to make sure your data is safe. 

Last year, Equifax revealed that they had had a data security breach and that criminals has obtained very private data — like social security numbers, birth dates, and drivers license numbers — from almost 150 million people.  That is almost half of the people in the United States. Even though you may have never voluntarily done business with Equifax, they most likely have all of your data because they are one of the 3 big credit reporting agencies.  That means every time you open up a line of credit, they are the company that sends the detailed credit report showing that you are a good credit risk — or not. 

So, what does this mean?  It means that the criminals who stole that data can now use your private information in order to open up new lines of credit in your name — without your knowledge.  Until, of course, they have ruined your credit and you are informed that you own hundred of thousand of dollars in fraudulent purchases.  If that seems scary, it’s because it totally is!  So, here’s what you need to do to 1) check to see if your data was affected and 2) if it was, lock down your credit.  This should take no longer than 20 minutes and will protect you from massive headaches and possibly massive financial losses.   I got all of this information from a helpful New York Times article, which I’ll link to in the notes section.

Before we start, right after this went public, Equifax originally made you sign this OUTRAGEOUS agreement that made you waive your rights to sue them later just in order to find out whether your data was impacted. Mercifully, they were shamed into getting rid of this, so you don’t have to worry about signing away your first born in order to protect your information. More about Equifax being kind of a monster later. 

Are you affected?

Okay — first thing you need to do it check to see whether your data was stolen.  You need to go to www.equifaxsecurity2017.com - I’ll include all of these websites that I’m referencing in the notes section.  Click on the button that reads “Am I Impacted?”  You’ll need to enter your last name and the last 6 digits of your Social Security Number and click to let them know you are not a robot.  Okay, you’ll either get a message saying you were not impacted, or one that says you were. This is a nice way of saying — “Yes, your private information is now in the hand of criminals.”  As far as I’m concerned, this page should look more like this.  Okay, if your data hasn’t been impacted, you can breathe a sigh of relief.  However, eve if your data is safe for now, you should still access your credit report semi-annually to make sure there isn’t any strange activity on your account.  After all, several companies have your private data and it took Equifax MONTHS to let us know there was a security breach, so it’s best to stay on top of this stuff.

Freeze your accounts

• Equifax - https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo.jsp
• Experion - https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
• TransUnion -  www.transunion.com/freeze

If you have been affected, you should freeze your accounts not just with Equifax, but with the other 2 big consumer credit reporting firms as well.  Just a quick note, some credit agencies are encouraging customers to lock rather than freeze their accounts. Consumer Reports recommends freezing for a bunch of reasons, the most persuasive of which is that freezes are protected by law and locks are just an agreement with the already shady company that got you into this problem in the first place (https://www.consumerreports.org/credit-bureaus/why-credit-freeze-is-better-than-credit-lock/).  So, I decided to freeze our accounts. 

Basically, freezing your account means that these credit agencies can’t release your information to any company that doesn’t already have you as a customer. So, that means that Mr. Criminal with your SSN and drivers license goes to open a line of credit in your name and can’t because the credit agency will say that account is locked.  If you DO want to take out credit — like open a new credit card or a car loan, you’ll need to temporarily unfreeze the account. This is annoying, but not as annoying as having your identity stolen.

Okay — back to freezing your account with the 3 agencies. Each one has a slightly different process, but basically go to the websites that I have listed in the notes section, sign up, pay a small fee (believe me, I find this outrageous also, but there’s not much we can do about it for now), and select a PIN.  You are going to have to remember this PIN — and your PINs will be different for each agency since they all have slightly different PIN requirements. Write it down and keep it somewhere you will remember. Because you will need it to unfreeze your account.  Once you have done all of this, you can breath a sigh of relief, but you can’t stop being vigilant.

Check Credit Report Regularly

You should plan to pull a credit report every 4-6 months for you (and your spouse if you have one). You can pull one for free at www.annualcreditreport.com.  This report won’t have your credit score on it, but it will allow you to see any new activity.  Obviously, if there is new activity that you do not recognize, immediately sound the alarms. And one last thing

Tax Returns

I heard this scary thing recently that criminals are using the information that they got from the security breach to file tax returns with stolen personal information. You won’t know that this happened until you go to file your tax return and it gets rejected since someone has already done that and received a fraudulent refund.  Now, it seems to me that the government should have a greater than average responsibility to determine if you are who you say you are, but just to be safe, filing your tax returns early will prevent this from affecting you. 

So get going!  It really only takes 20 minutes start to finish, you can check this off your list — you know you’ve been thinking “I really need to look into that” AND it protects you from significant future headaches. Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!