Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What's a Practical Response To the Equifax Breach?
In response to the massive Equifax cybersecurity incident impacting approximately 143 million U.S. consumer -- making it possibly the worst leak of personal info ever -- Slashdot reader AdamStarks asks: What steps can the average Joe take to protect their identity? Accepting Equifax's help forfeits your right to sue; it's the same with applying for protection at TransUnion (not sure about Experian). Extra services at those companies also cost money, but that's putting even more of your data in their hands, and it's not clear whether the protection/help they provide is worth it (leaving aside not wanting to reward bad behavior).
Don't waste your time or money on their monitoring "services", which don't do much. Instead, freeze your credit with each of the agencies.
Krebs' "Dumpster Fire" post on the Equifax debacle is worth reading.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/20...
The security freeze prevents anyone, even you, from opening a credit account or getting a loan in your name, including yourself, until you lift the freeze.
You never know about a identity theft until after the fact and weird bills start coming in. Basically you agree to a PIN number. No new loans can take place in your name unless the applicant knows the number.
It's close to free but there may be a few $10 fees depending on where you do it: https://www.transunion.com/cre...
The credit reputation agencies don't offer it by default because their business model is to sell you fraud alert monitoring services. Logically, if there's a freeze, there's nothing for them to monitor. This is the cheapest and best solution.
Second, stop giving Equifax your money.
Third, class action suit.
PS: Krebs on Security has a great piece that's now a few years old but shows why credit freezes are good and the other crap sold by Equifax and their peers are more or less useless in comparison: Transition and Experien promote have little value: https://krebsonsecurity.com/20...
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
CREDIT FREEZE
What steps can the average Joe take to protect their identity? Accepting Equifax's help forfeits your right to sue; it's the same with applying for protection at TransUnion (not sure about Experian). Extra services at those companies also cost money, but that's putting even more of your data in their hands, and it's not clear whether the protection/help they provide is worth it (leaving aside not wanting to reward bad behavior).
Here is a good guide on freezing your credit: http://clark.com/personal-fina...
There is no reason for the vast majority of people to leave their credit open. Seriously, most people apply for new credit maybe once every few years, if that. Leaving your credit open is simply asking for trouble.
As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (or their SI equivalents if you don't like conventional weights and measures).
I'm not a security guard. I'm a security monitor. I let people know when there's a robbery.
There's a robbery.
When I experienced identity theft it wasn't through bogus charges on my credit card (which my bank normally picks up on right away) but through about a dozen newly-opened store-specific credit card purchases and utility bills in places between 1,000 and 4,000 miles away from where I live.
That's not something I could have easily monitored by just checking my bank's website.
In my case the perpetrator was caught by police in another state within a day or two of my first learning about the first bogus account. Not everybody is so lucky.