Eight months after Equifax megahack, some Brits are only just being notified Some of the 15 million Britons affected by the Equifax mega-hack are only now receiving letters notifying them that they were affected by the breach, eight months after the event. As we reported in September 2017, Equifax confessed to having been hacked, upping the number of affected people in the following weeks to a 145 …
"We have contacted Equifax for comment and its PR agency has promised to send us a timeline of the credit reference agency's efforts to contact hack victims. We will update this article if it responds. ®"
If their performance so far is anything to go by, you should have something from them around mid October.
you should have something from them around mid October
And it'll be a request for all sorts of data "just to make sure that we know it's you". Or, as I explained to someone who purported to be from my credit-card company (unsolicited call: "we just want you to know about some offers but first we need you to identify yourself". My response was "since I don't have a clue who you are, why don't you tell me something from my account to identify yourself first?". She got quite shirty and kept insisting that I identify myself. The phone suffered a service disconnection event shortly afterwards..)
All of which data will, undoubtedly find its way into the public view either by incompetence or greed. Or incompetent greed..
Having had my fingers burnt with this one I would like to know who the data was collated for.
So far Equifax has been very quiet on this.
The identity monitoring tool of thiers is not particularly good. It keeps emailing me to tell me that its found something. I'm reluctant to sign up for the more intrusive monitoring as you have to give them even more personal information and given that they have already lost a load of personal information it does not bode well for trusting them to keep the data safe.
Eight months ago you may have been a victim of a fire. In fact, you could be on fire now, or could be in the future.
I know you will be concerned about what this means for you and how we will support you. Call between 8am-8pm. We will not call or email you unless you ask us too.
When are they losing, whichever bullshit license they operate under and closing the door. They serve no purpose, other than badly presenting inaccurate information (and charging to put right); to gild a made up number, used to falsely inflate peoples creditworthiness (bad tings TM) or unduly punish the poor or unlucky. #gotojaildonotpassgo
Given the amount of time that hackers had access to Equifax's system February - June it is not unreasonable to assume all 980 million individual and 90 million corporate records have been taken. No company would ever admit to a theft on that scale unless forced by law to do so, they would provide numbers which sound plausible but are far from reality.
Equifax and many other companies who have been hacked have little incentive to tell the world about their negligence. There should be massive fines for such negligence and greater fines if affected customers are not notified within 30 days. These companies are very cavalier about other people's personal data and the nightmare outcome from exposure of this data.
Alas you have no choice, you can't avoid Equifax unless you live in a self sustaining cabin in the woods with no utilities, no bank account, and no accounts with companies that offer credit of any type.
Aiming ire at Equifax would be like trying to herd cats.
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