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Experian Criticized Over Credit-Freeze PIN Security and 'Dark Web' Scans (theverge.com)
Security researcher Brian Krebs complains that Experian's identity-protecting credit freezes are easily unfrozen online. An anonymous reader quotes the Verge:
Experian makes it easy to undo a credit freeze, resetting a subject's PIN through an easily accessible account recovery page. That page only asks for a person's name, address, date of birth, and Social Security number...data [that] was compromised in the Equifax breach, as well as other breaches, so we can probably assume hackers possess this information. After entering that data, attackers then just have to enter an email address -- any email -- and answer a few security questions.
That might not jump out as insecure; security questions exist for a reason. But the questions themselves are easy to answer, particularly if you know how to use the internet and a search bar. Krebs says sample questions include asking users to identify cities where they've previously lived and the people that resided with them. Much of that information is available through a person's own social media accounts, search engines, or Yellow Pages-like databases, including Spokeo and Zillow... In response to Krebs' report, Experian claims that it goes beyond the measures identified to authenticate users. "While we do not disclose those additional processes," said the company in a statement, "they include a broad array of checks that are not visible to the consumer."
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that Experian is also advertising a "free scan of the dark Web" which actually binds anyone who accepts it to their 17,600-word terms of service, as well as acceptance of "advertisements or offers" from financial products companies -- plus "an arbitration clause preventing you from suing the company" which a spokesperson acknowledges could remain in effect for several years.
That might not jump out as insecure; security questions exist for a reason. But the questions themselves are easy to answer, particularly if you know how to use the internet and a search bar. Krebs says sample questions include asking users to identify cities where they've previously lived and the people that resided with them. Much of that information is available through a person's own social media accounts, search engines, or Yellow Pages-like databases, including Spokeo and Zillow... In response to Krebs' report, Experian claims that it goes beyond the measures identified to authenticate users. "While we do not disclose those additional processes," said the company in a statement, "they include a broad array of checks that are not visible to the consumer."
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that Experian is also advertising a "free scan of the dark Web" which actually binds anyone who accepts it to their 17,600-word terms of service, as well as acceptance of "advertisements or offers" from financial products companies -- plus "an arbitration clause preventing you from suing the company" which a spokesperson acknowledges could remain in effect for several years.
Some Tips for Experian...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
The only thing you can do is to keep checking your credit reports for something suspicious. With the data they have, there is nothing you can do to 100% stop it.
Politicians SHOULD be fixing this, by forcing the credit bureaus to lock down everyone's data and come up with a foolproof way of confirming identity. But instead, I see we're all riled up on football players not standing during national anthems. Way to set priorities, America!
Congress needs to enact some laws banning arbitration clauses.
They hurt consumers and destroy the spirit of the law.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Here's what will keep happening during the next years: entire "systems" that are riddled with horrible security practices and no competent personel to care of it will come crashing down after years of negligence.
I dunno how many of them will be in such a spectacular cascade of revelations, but I imagine that a sizeable portion will be.
Security professionals and conscious people have been warning for a while that stuff like that was going to eventually happen, but businesses, services and corporations small and large have not only been ignoring things so far, they have been introducing more and more points of failure over the years.
We are only starting to walk in the middle of a minefield. By the end of it, if we didn't already go to a full blown war, privacy will be dead for a whole ton of people, rights violated and trampled.
It's pretty much the perfect storm crime/theft/scam. All that data that's being leaked, hacked into, collected and harvested to be sold, or actively spied and taken in real time is accumulating somewhere, perhaps in databases inside the darknet, by criminals and hacker groups, by corporations that will eventually take advantage of it. It'll be terabytes upon terabytes of sophisticated dossier databases that will give all sorts of private information about anyone with a single search.
People don't react to it and don't seem to care all that much because that information can be exploited slowly. Who cares if someone got his/her identity stolen, as long as it's not happening to me it's ok. But one day it will. And then, it's no use getting angry and trying to fight against it because much as yourself once did, no one cares.
This is our future.
No, individuals are found in the White Pages, not the Yellow Pages.
It seems that you get organisations (I use that word deliberately, to include private sector and government) where once in a while somebody drops the ball and there's a bit of a balls-up but they fix it in good order, learn the lessons and move on.
Then there are others that lurch from one crisis into two more, like Hobbes' Leviathan made of Mr Bean clones.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why is most of the summary attributed to Brian Krebs, then you link to some shitty article from theverge.com?
I think it really does not help to freeze months after a breach. Your only real effective solution now is to monitor any suspicious activity on your credit reports and hope your not a target. Brian Krebs is right, the damage is done and creating a online account with TrustedID is hardly going to stop anyone. I thought the same thing, don't these people already have enough of my information to unlock anything I do? Really I hope the help comes from institutions who may get false applications in my name for credit.
Yet ANOTHER ham fisted reaction to what ought to be a pretty straight forward mea culpa, fix of issues, etc. Their leadership is simply not trustworthy and that's paramount in this particular business.
It wasn't even the Judges, it was Plucky self-educated defendants who realized the scam, and brought the issue of no proof of ownership of the loan to the Judge during their hearings.
YOYO = You're On Your Own.
people still put true answers to security questions instead of password-like responses?
What you described are security questions that a customer sets up to regain access to a service they have contracted for.
What Experian asks, as do many financial services companies, are questions drawn from either their own or another data broker's (Axciom) database of information about you. It is especially pernicious that they are continuing this after they let that database be stolen.
I gave Fidelity an earful a little while back when they were going to take away the choice of using an OTP to verify my identity for a trade and instead require me to verify Acxiom-provided biographic information. Talk about a security downgrade...
I read an article in The Guardian where a security expert recommended that uses (in the UK) put a "Notice of Correction" on their Experian(UK) file (and others):
Jamieson sent a notice of correction to the three main credit reference agencies. It states: “I, Jamie Jamieson, of [his address], do hereby declare that when my signature is required for any financial product or service, I will authenticate it with my thumbprint. Failure by me to comply with this direction should result in the service or product being withheld. Any application without a thumbprint should be considered fraudulent. I will inform you in writing, signed and thumbprinted, of any changes to this notice of correction.”
https://www.theguardian.com/mo...
This would seem to be a good solution. A fraudster would not necessarily know about the thumbprint requirement and when asked for a thumbprint would be reluctant to put his own thumbprint on a document. If they did, they could be traced by the thumbprint. It wouldn't require the creditor to check the thumbprint unless there was a problem.
Would this work in the US?
(The US credit bureaus allow you to add a "Statement" to your account.)
(I know that fingerprints can be copied and faked but this would probably stop a lot of opportunistic fraud.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
This seems glaringly obvious to me, and I would hope anyone that has to use security questions, but DO NOT put actual answers in.
Mother's Maiden Name? PALkfidhf776dg.
No amount of googling, public records or other searching will EVER turn those type of answers up in relation to one of your accounts.
if the dark web isn't indexed, and the sites are encrypted, how the hell is experian "searching the dark web?