Hey, guys, Sciâs putting on her financial hat for a second.
Equifax, one of the big three US credit bureaus, has acknowledged a major hack of their systems. Â This affects both personal information, such as name, SSN, date of birth, and contact information, as well as more specific data, such as credit card numbers.
You can read the FTCâs breakdown of the situation here:
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2017/09/equifax-data-breach-what-do
Guys.  This is⌠ This is huge.  This is terrifying and very bad and very big.  Especially at risk are younger people, people with minimal or barely established credit reports, and older people, people who do not have to make as many loans and may not check their credit reports often.
Even if your credit file is minimal, hackers can use this data to do things like file taxes in your name before you can. Â Nothing like going to file and being told your refund was sent to someone elseâs account a month ago. Â These kind of things are hard to straighten out, theyâre time consuming and horrible to deal with.
What do you do now?
First, go to the Equifax breach security page and check to see if you were in fact affected:
https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/potential-impact/
If you are, or even if they say you werenât, please consider enrolling in the free monitoring that theyâre providing. Â If youâre not willing to take the advice of some random person on the internet (A good choice, honestly!) check with your bank, your lenders or your financial adviser as to what they would recommend.
Ask how your current accounts are protected. Â Ask how they guard against a card being sent to an alternate address, or what means they use to validate a caller on the phone, or through their web chat feature, if they have one. Â Ask how you will be notified about any account changes, including things like phone, email and address changes. Â Ask if they would recommend password changes for online banking or banking app usage. Â Ask if there is a chance they will be reissuing your plastics (debit or credit card).
For those of you who do not like talking on the phone, check to see if your financial institution has a web chat or email feature! Â Most do, now, and that can be much less stressful. Â But remember, no matter how you contact them, your banks and lenders should take your questions seriously. Â
Also, if you do have to contact Equifax, remember that the person who picks up the phone has the WORST JOB IN THE ENTIRE WORLD RIGHT NOW. Â Please, do your best to remain calm and professional. Â The minimum wage phone bank operator has nothing to do with the failure of Equifaxâs cyber security. Â Their job is to help you any way they can right now, and that will go so much faster and smoother if you treat them like a human being with a lousy frickinâ job right now.
FYI
