Credit Reporting Firm Equifax Announces 'Cybersecurity Incident Impacting Approximately 143 Million US Consumers' (cnbc.com)

Equifax, which supplies credit information and other information services, said Thursday that a cybersecurity incident discovered on July 29 could have potentially affected 143 million consumers in the U.S. "The leaked data includes names, birth dates, social security numbers, addresses and potentially drivers licenses," reports CNBC. "209,000 U.S. credit card numbers were also obtained, in addition to 'certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers."

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Richard F. Smith said in a statement: "This is clearly a disappointing event for our company, and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do. I apologize to consumers and our business customers for the concern and frustration this causes. We pride ourselves on being a leader in managing and protecting data, and we are conducting a thorough review of our overall security operations. We also are focused on consumer protection and have developed a comprehensive portfolio of services to support all U.S. consumers, regardless of whether they were impacted by this incident." Equifax is now alerting customers whose information was included in the breach via mail, and is working with state and federal authorities.

UPDATE (9/7/17): According to Bloomberg, "three Equifax senior executives sold shares worth almost $1.8 million" in the days after the company discovered the security breach. Regulatory filings show that three days after the breach was discovered on July 29th, Chief Financial Officer John Gamble sold shares worth $946,374 and Joseph Loughran, president of U.S. information solutions, exercised options to dispose of stock worth $584,099." Meanwhile, "Rodolfo Ploder, president of workforce solutions, sold $250,458 of stock on Aug. 2."

Comments

That's not what class action is for

[rsilvergun]

class action is so the companies can pay a token amount and get perpetual indemnity for all future legal action. The best part? With recent changes in law making mandatory arbitration legally binding at the federal level (thanks, Republican Congress and Blue Dog Dems!) you don't even get that anymore.

Folks need to start putting left wingers into Congress if they wanna see this crap happen, but nobody wants to pay the taxes for it. Nevermind that just ending the 7 wars we're running would cover it. But then I'm not so sure folks want to end those wars. Our president's largest bump in poll numbers came after he dropped a $20 million dollar bomb on a bunch of Afghani goat herders with soviet era weapons...