I Was Affected By the Equifax Security Breach. Check to See If You Have Been Too
Immediate panic set in as I checked to see if I was one of the 143 million people affected by the security breach at Equifax. Waiting for that screen to tell me if I was or was not seemed like it took forever... Then it happened. The screen popped up and said:
"Based on the information provided, we believe that your personal information may have been impacted by this incident."
Great. Exactly what I needed to hear. In case you cannot sense sarcasm online, that previous sentence was layered with it.
According to 9News, hackers were able to access up to 143 million customers on Equifax. That includes some credit card numbers, social security numbers as announced by the credit reporting service. Equifax has known about the security breach since July 29th and diligently worked to stop it. The hackers used a website application to get access to files for nearly a month (mid-Mat to June).
So how do you check to see if you are one of the millions that have been affected? Thankfully, Equifax has set up a website that customers can go to to see if their data was part of the breach. If it has, like mine was, they are giving complementary credit monitoring and identity theft services for a year.
To see if you have been affected, check your information out HERE.
Source: 9News