Equifax Hack Concerns Canadians

Equifax Hack Concerns Canadians

Credit reporting giant Equifax has yet to reveal how many Canadians had their personal information hacked over this past spring and summer when the company’s database was breached. Equifax discovered the hack back on July 29th but waited until last Thursday to warn consumers that criminals exploited a U.S. website application to access files between mid-May and July of this year. Canadians who have accounts with Equifax Canada expressed frustration at the difficulty of getting any help or information from the company.


To start off with, how serious is this security breach at Equifax?

It seems to be very serious. The company has not yet released how many Canadians are affected but said nearly 143 million Americans had their data breached. Equifax is saying that the breach exposed the information of an “unknown” number of people living in Canada and the United Kingdom.

And so, it looks like hackers were able to get consumers’ names, social insurance numbers, birth dates, addresses, credit card information and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers. This information is enough for the thieves to hijack the identities of people whose credentials were stolen.

There are 26 million people who have credit scores with Equifax in Canada, with the information that was taken, a hacker could fill out a mortgage application or buy a cellphone so it’s pretty scary and serious.

In total, according to its website., Equifax handles data on more than 820 million consumers and more than 91 million businesses worldwide.


How can people tell if their personal information at Equifax has been compromised?

Equifax established a website where people can check to see if their personal information may have been stolen. If you go to: (https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/) you can click the Potential Impact link it will allow you to enter some personal details to see if your information has been compromised. Consumers can also call 1-866-447-7559 for more information.


Why did Equifax wait to tell the public?

So, it looked like Equifax waited about six weeks to disclose that sensitive information was hacked in a data breach. Sometimes thats to figure out the scope of this intrusion, sometimes thats to try and catch the criminals and many times its to ALLOW for a complete digital forensic review of the data.


What should people do if they discover their information has been hacked?

If you do find your personal information may have been impacted, there are a few steps you can take to protect yourself from identity theft.

Monitor your Equifax credit score. You should watch your credit score as soon as possible and keep an eye on it to make sure nothing suspicious is happening.  That said, Equifax is saying they will provide free identity theft protection and credit file monitoring to its consumers at the moment. If you are affected and have no confidence in Equifax then there are a number of free credit monitoring services out there:Mogo. (https://www.mogo.ca/). If you monitor your score monthly and then see your credit rating drop, it’s an indication something has happened.

Freeze your credit reports. If you find that your personal information was stolen from Equifax you can actually freeze your Equifax account. Doing this restricts access to your credit report, which helps prevent other credit card companies from accessing it to open up new accounts.

If you find out that your Social Insurance Number was stolen in this breach, you might want to file a police report. A social insurance number is the Holy Grail of identity theft giving hackers the ability to do a lot of malicious things in your name and so filing an identity theft police report and sending a copy of it to Equifax will help in this situation.

Finally, keep an eye on your bank and credit card statements and alert them if you see any suspicious activity and change your login passwords for your online bank accounts.

** One final note on all of this** 

Three Equifax executives sold shares worth a combined $1.8 million just a few days after the company discovered it had been hacked, according to documents filed with securities regulators. In a subsequent statement, Equifax said the three executives “had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time they sold their shares.” A coincidence? Who knows.

thedigitalteacher

 

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