First, Let’s start with the Banklady’s take on the Reasons why the Equifax data breach is a total disaster:

1. Security breach on their end.
2. They knew a month ago and waited this long to give the details to the people impacted (that’s us).
3. It looks like some of their shady executives were dumping stock in the meantime.
4. Their website to “help” looks like it was designed by the slowest kid in fourth grade. People are questioning whether to even trust that site.
5. Once you enter your information on the makeshift site they made to check to see if you have been on of the people affected it doesn’t even tell you if were impacted for sure.
6. The site won’t let you enroll for any help and they won’t send a reminder when that’s ready.

Equifax as we have told you about in the past is one of the nation’s three main credit reporting agencies. They announced a “cybersecurity incident” that could potentially impact roughly 143 million U.S. consumers. They knew about it for weeks before they revealed it to the general population. The news also comes just months after a breach occurred at an Equifax subsidiary earlier this year, exposing W-2 and payroll data to criminals.

Equifax data breach exposes personal info of millions of Americans

According to Equifax, hackers exploited a security vulnerability in a U.S.-based application to gain access to consumers’ personal files. After discovering the breach on July 29 of this year, the company says it “acted immediately to stop the intrusion” and “promptly engaged a leading, independent cybersecurity firm that has been conducting a comprehensive forensic review to determine the scope of the intrusion, including the specific data impacted.” [Read more…]