Slashdot Mirror
Equifax Says Almost 400,000 Britons Hit In Data Breach (bbc.co.uk)
MalachiK shares a report from the BBC: Data about British people "may potentially have been accessed" during the data breach at the U.S. credit rating firm Equifax. The UK arm of the organization said files containing information on "fewer than 400,000" UK consumers was accessed in the breach. In a statement, the UK office of Equifax said an internal investigation had shown that data on UK consumers was accessed during the hack. It said data on Britons was being held in the U.S. due to a "process failure" which meant that a limited amount of information was stored in North America between 2011 and 2016. The information held included names, dates of birth, email addresses and telephone numbers. No addresses, passwords or financial data was involved.
and say Everybody got Equifaxed
... cluster fuck.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Go equifax yourself.
Just the Equifax ma'am.
The entire consumer credit reporting industry has been "breached". It's only a matter of time before the other two players make their announcements.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
When it's less than it really mean 399,999 where as if it was nearly it would be 351,000.
Cunts
By admitting to this, charges can be brought by UK under EU regulations for storing those details. Never mind the class action lawsuit wanting billions in reparation, now those with the power to levy their own fines and decide how large they can be can tear Equifax a new one so wide it can be used as an alternative to the Channel Tunnel.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
This company needs the corporate death penalty. Shut it down, high level management in charge of security gets prison time.
Unless there are meaningful penalties, companies are not going to stop aggregating our information and then failing to secure it. It's too easy to say, "cost of security is higher than OUR cost in a breach, so we'll ignore security".
There have to be asses on the line. No excuses.
What?.... Really?... oh.. so sorry... never mind....
It's just wonderful, with everyone's personal information completely out there, from now on the standard way of doing things is going to involve everyone having to freeze and unfreeze their credit manually with each freaking credit agency every time they need to do something with it. And giving money to the credit agencies in the process. Brilliant.
>> data on (400K) Britons was being held in the U.S. due to a "process failure"
I suspect it would have been MORE Britons, but that Equifax only had data on 400K Britons.
>> "We only store EU member data on EU servers..."
(memebot: "Maury Povich": [anything Equifax says]: "our lie detector says that is a lie")
companies seem to be more fearful of the european union than the u.s. federal government (ref: google, apple, microsoft, others).
so, to our friends across the great pond.... BURN THEM.
a data breach, incompetence in reporting post event, and a healthy dose of insider trading, it now appears they were violating EU law as well.
I hope Equifax doesn't go under too quickly. It's providing a lot of entertainment right now.
I actually decided to take action on this fiasco. I decided to try to find out if Equifax has a file on me and if so, was my file leaked. If those questions get positive answers, then I might need to do something. Spent a long time searching, mostly on the Equifax website, but also tried email, webform, chat, and was willing to try a voice call, too. Got NOTHING so far. It's almost like the Equifax people want to pretend there's no problem here.
I think what's bugging me most about this abuse of personal information is that I don't get to join in. Let's take the case of you, whoever you are. Should I pay any attention to your comments? What is your reputation really like? Companies like Equifax have assembled comprehensive dossiers on you, but I can't even get a short summary for preemptive filtering. Hey, if a troll has no credit history at all, then why should I pretend the troll exists? Why should my supposedly valuable time be wasted by a sock puppet when a quick background check of his credit history would prove there's no one there?
Now about that aggregation and display of public reputation on websites such as Slashdot... Karma hurts, don't it?
Oh yeah. Forgot one bit. Please don't forget to let me know if I can do anything to help put Equifax into bankruptcy. Phone my congress-critters? Join a lawsuit? Tweet? The sky's the limit, unlike my own credit rating.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Equifax is now an international criminal organization.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Please be specific.
Requiem for the American Dream
For an individual, process failures lead to inevitable to balance one's financial affairs. This is monetised by credit reference agencies at both ends, to the detriment of the individual.
For credit reference agencies, process failures lead to....?
What do we have which rates companies, so that we can assess the worth of companies and stonewall those which don't meet certain criteria?
Requiem for the American Dream
Forget getting information on this breach, just try to get your once a year free credit report. Tried for over a decade, and I still have never seen my own damn Equifax credit report. I see dozens of them a week come across my desk since I work for a property management company, but so far I have never been able to see my own report from Equifax. They have been breaking the law for over a decade for refusing to provide us with our credit reports.
Educational background of Chief Information Office and Chief Security officer caught my attention. According to http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/15/news/equifax-top-executives-retiring/index.html CIO got bachelor's degree in Russian, CSO studied music in college. Both are retiring (not getting fired) according to the same article.
Can somebody chime in if this is unusual for CIO/CSO positions?
The fix will have something to do with monitoring pornography.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They release the news about the US breach on a Friday while everyone is focused on a hurricane. They release the news about a UK breach on a Friday when everyone is focused on a terrorist attack. Coincidence?
Even though the UK is leaving the EU, the EU is going to have a field day with this.
It's good to know that Equifax will probably no longer exist in a few months. Probably makes sense why those executives sold their stock. They knew the company was over. The question is, will the other reporting agencies take their jobs more seriously?
I'm sure they are completely on top of damage assessment, they were obviously very skilled and knowledgable otherwise....
Their choice to blame open source for their admin/admin login doesn't inspire confidence in their communication
I signed up for their "trustedid" thing 4 days ago. Was supposed to hear back and so far haven't heard ANYTHING. Went to Transunion and did a fraud alert. So at least all three will have to put me on fraud alert. Better than nothing.