The more that comes out the more this sounds like a nightmare. Why does Equifax have so little responsibility for this? Why do consumers have to ask them if their information was compromised? Why doesn't Equifax have to notify people that hackers now have their information? This seems backwards. We do we have to flag our credit information, why isn't this done automatically?
It's total bullshit, but at least they are offering free credit freezes. Most of the advice I've read says with all of this information out in the wild, everybody should probably lock all three of their credit reports. You'll just have to unfreeze them whenever you want to apply for a loan or credit.
That's what I've heard too but after the first lock it costs $20 per credit agency to lock your credit after you unlock it to apply for credit.
Also once you lock your credit all the free credit monitoring you get with most credit cards now goes poof!
Something that's interesting is that lots of people are filing small claims suits over this instead of joining a class action lawsuit. Instead of waiting years to get $15 they are suing for the max allowable in the state they live in. ($10,000 in Oregon.) This is something to keep an eye on. One story I read is Equifax hired law firms in all 50 states to fight these before they announced the hack to the public.
Don't they already have everyone's info from all the target/Walmart/bank/etc hacks? I'm probably missing something obvious, but how is this any different? I mean, I would guess every single American has been exposed at one point or another.
They have names and account numbers from the other hacks. The Equifax hack they have name, SS#, DL#, Mother's Maiden name, addresses, everything.
$20? I know they have an option to open your credit for a period of days instead of fully unlocking, then manually having to go back in and lock after everything is done.
Not to mention the story that several executives sold a substantial amount of their stock days before it came out. Not to mention they just "coincidently", months after the fact, decided to release the news during a massive hurricane story. Not to mention that when you go to the "checker site" that Equifax provided to see if you're effected, they basically will tell you no matter what that you were in fact effected. People put "test" for their last name and "123456" as the last 6 digits of their social and were told that they were likely effected. No doubt to get you to enroll in the free year of service they will provide. Of course it's their own service and at the end of the year you are automatically billed in order to continue having the service, essentially making you pay them for fucking you over. Total bullshit.
Transunion and experian are probably pretty happy with the equifax fuck up though. Revenue for them with much more limited backlash. Thanks Obama!
I heard that when you sign up for the free monitoring with them it includes a rights waiver so you can't sue.
A credit freeze cost me $10 per agency (free with Equifax for the next month) and you can "thaw" them temporarily or to allow specific entities to access them on a case by case basis and it is frozen again without charge. It's just a bit of a hassle.
I tried to freeze my Equifax today and their automated phone system said it couldn't process me over the phone. Tried customer service but nobody ever picked up. How did you go about freezing your account? Btw, for those that have already frozen their accounts with Equifax, this might be of interest to you.
I used the website. https://www.freeze.equifax.com/ I think it's getting a lot of hits, so occasionally you might have to try a couple of times to get it to go through. Alternatively you can do it by mail. As for weak pins, they corrected that flaw and have started generating randomized strings of numbers. Whatever you do, print out one copy and put it someplace secure (a fire safe, a real safe, or a safety deposit box) and maybe store an encrypted copy of the pdf on dropbox or google drive. Both Transunion and Experian offer the option to freeze your other credit reports for $10 (which you'll want to do now that your whole life is possibly in the hands of the hackers)
What do you mean "you go through Experian"? All of the credit agencies compile a credit rating for you and list all of your vital personal information. When one gets hacked it means that whomever took your information has everything they need to open accounts in your name: DOB, Soc#, former residences, family members, old account numbers, etc., etc. You have to lock them all down, because every creditor uses different credit reporting agencies.
Froze the reports for my wife and I yesterday. Errored out on the pdf that showed our pins. So have to go through a pain in the ass process to get equifax to send us them. Good thing i dont need new credit for awhile.
Ugh, that sucks. FWIW, the Transunion website has its shit together and it's pretty easy to set everything up and make changes when needed through an actual login.
