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Equifax's Data Breach By the Numbers: 146 Million Social Security Numbers, 99 Million Addresses, and More (theregister.co.uk)
Several months after the data breach was first reported, Equifax has published the details on the personal records and sensitive information stolen in the cybersecurity incident. The good news: the number of individuals affected by the network intrusion hasn't increased from the 146.6 million Equifax previously announced, but extra types of records accessed by the hackers have turned up in Mandiant's ongoing audit of the security breach," reports The Register. From the report: Late last week, the company gave the numbers in letters to the various U.S. congressional committees investigating the network infiltration, and on Monday, it submitted a letter to the SEC, corporate America's financial watchdog. As well as the -- take a breath -- 146.6 million names, 146.6 million dates of birth, 145.5 million social security numbers, 99 million address information and 209,000 payment cards (number and expiry date) exposed, the company said there were also 38,000 American drivers' licenses and 3,200 passport details lifted, too.
The further details emerged after Mandiant's investigators helped "standardize certain data elements for further analysis to determine the consumers whose personally identifiable information was stolen." The extra data elements, the company said, didn't involve any individuals not already known to be part of the super-hack, so no additional consumer notifications are required.
The further details emerged after Mandiant's investigators helped "standardize certain data elements for further analysis to determine the consumers whose personally identifiable information was stolen." The extra data elements, the company said, didn't involve any individuals not already known to be part of the super-hack, so no additional consumer notifications are required.
How many people from other countries got screwed by Equifax and to what degree? The stories reporting affected people seem to continually ignore the fact that there's more to the planet than the US and companies like Equifax have no qualms about screwing non-USians, too.
It's a good thing all those executives went to prison so corporations will start taking security seriously.
Oh wait.
For Equifax to be in charge of my personal information.
Can anyone elaborate as to why they were put in charge, and what recourse do I have to punish this company for mishandling my information?
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
I keep saying, the following penalty scheme imposed on companies will clean up data breaches right quick:
$1 per name, email, physical address
$2 per phone number
$3 per credit card number
$4 per SSN
And multiply for combinations thereof. You'll see how fast companies move to secure their data.
I got a letter from the IRS that my SSN is being used by someone else to obtain employment. Again. Thanks, Equifax!
Why do financial institutions seem to insist that Social Security numvers are a secret code? The government should just publish ALL of the SSNs
That is the way it works in many countries: Your citizenship number is public information.
Many have a separate changeable PIN for authentication.
The American system of making the same number both semi-public and secret is unique.
If 10% of the population went on record and disclosed their SSNs publicly it would shut down the SSN as a 'secret code.'
Equifax has already done this as a public service. Good for them.
In fact this isn't only a problem with Americans but world wide. People globally just don't give a damn... Where are the pitchforks guys?!
Disclaimer: I am not an American
That's the names, dates of birth, and tax ID numbers of roughly 45% of the entire United States (population ~326 million). Subtract children who don't have credit yet (~74 million), that's roughly 58% of US adults.
If "payment card" means credit card, that's 20% of all them in the US (1,041 million). Often you only need the number and expiration date to charge something to the card.
Those addresses are for roughly 30% of the population (if an address was attached to one name), or more (if an address was attached to multiple names [ie: people living together]).
While you won't find this info out there as it's been pretty hushed, but walmart.com took down their CC application site for over a week after a load of stolen IDs were used to apply for CC's there. There is some indication that the data came from this breach.
Their primary business is making sure adverse credit information follows people around, while making the assumption that the adverse reports are actually about the named person. Even while they know damned well that their own negligence has enabled ID fraud on a massive scale.
It has happened; that's what the story is about. 50-100% Americans already did, whether we wanted to or not.
The information is no longer secret; we know for sure that it is definitely in the hands of ne'er-do-wells. Anyone who uses it for authentication is definitely, 100% being negligent without any possibility that they're trying to do the right thing or even slightly being diligent. If loans have been made based on this, we know that the loaning institution is almost certainly reporting their assets fraudulently.
So.. post yours.
Yeah, me neither. The problem is that even though the info is no longer secret, the government might still be pretending that it is... which makes it be sensitive.. sort of. So it's a government problem at this point.
Maybe November's candidates should be talking about how they intend to deal with it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"Unique."
I nominate ShanghaiBill for the Politest Person of the Year award!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The number of top executives who went to jail : 0
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It does rub salt in the woulds a bit that Equifax has done nothing but make matters worse for people whose ID is used fraudulently, and now they have actually facilitated that same ID fraud on a massive scale.
ShanghaiBill opined:
Non-violent offenders do not belong in prison.
Prompting a courageous Anonymous Coward to respond:
Is that a reference to the poor persecuted drug users? At least when they are locked up, they are not pouring money into the Mexican drug cartels' pockets.
You really, really need to read Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sam Quinones' book Dreamland: The True Story of America's Opioid Epidemic. It's essentially the story of how Perdue Pharmaceuticals created the opioid epidemic in the USA by misrepresenting to the FDA, Congress, and doctors across the country how "harmless" prescribing powerful opiod narcotics was, even for chronic pain.
Based strictly on Perdue's bullshit, doctors - especially high school and college sports medicine doctors - prescribed amounts of Perdue's high-purity hydocodone medication high enough to guarantee addiction in athletes, housewives, and victims of trauma (auto accidents, falls, etc.) over long periods of time. When schools and insurance companies cut them off from those pharmaceutical sources, they turned in droves to Mexican brown heroin - which a whole new coop-style drug cartel operating out of the region around Xalisco supplied, using a fleet of drivers and a central dispatcher in each city they expanded into to bring the heroin to their customers with virtually zero risk of being caught making a deal.
Those drug addicts whose lives you so casually dismiss were almost all created by Perdue's lies, and multi-billion-dollar, direct-to-physicians marketing campaign. They're junkies, yes. But most of them are victims of deliberate pharmaceutical industry malfeasance, not deliberate actors.
Full disclosure: I have no affiliation with Sam Quinones, nor do I have any affiliate relationship with Amazon. If you buy his book via the above link, I get exactly zero dollars - or any other consideration - from the sale. (And you can get it from any other major bookseller, if you prefer not to make Jeff Bezos any richer, btw.) I simply believe it's essential reading for anyone who's interested in how the hell this country found itself in this mess to begin with, and who's responsible for getting us here ...
Check out my novel.