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Equifax Data Breach

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kitz:
Considering there are ~49 million adults in the UK this surely has to be largest leak of personal data affecting British citizens.

Equifax stores the personal details of 44 million UK citizens.  Information stolen includes names, addresses, DoB, & social security numbers.   Other data stolen includes some drivers license details and credit card numbers. Many UK citizens will not realise their personal information has been stolen.  Customers of many UK companies such as BT, British Gas & Capital One are thought to be amongst those who are affected.

Equifax discovered the breach of data which is thought to have occurred during the period mid May - July 2017 on July 29th, but have only this week disclosed details of the cyber attack to the public.  The breach also affects ~143 million US customers.

More info - The Telegraph

kitz:
IMHO it's highly suspicious that that three senior executives at Equifax sold $2million of their company's shares on Aug 1st, just days after the company learned of the attack (Jul 29).

Not surprisingly Equifax shares have fallen since public disclosure last Thursday - Business Insider

roseway:
This is one of those worrying events which none of us can do anything to alleviate. We can change passwords, but this isn't about securing access - the criminals have already got the information that's available. It's a goldmine of information to assist identity theft. :(

kitz:
I find it very worrying, the data is extremely sensitive.  As one report said on a scale of one to ten, this is a ten.
Whilst they could and should be fined, its too late because there is no going back and the data is out there.  It will likely turn up on the dark web at some point.

As I said elsewhere I cant help but wonder if there was any more information leaked. Equifax's purpose is to store credit history.  Would criminals be able to access that too.   I'm assuming when they mention the fewer number which also have driving licence, & social security details etc leaked too, that they would be those who were direct customers with Equifax as that info is hardly likely to be of any interest to the likes of BT and British Gas etc. 

d2d4j:
Hi

I hope you don't mind, but there's one obvious thing which comes to mind (although I have not read the links sorry - this was reported on speedtester a few days ago), and that's passwords

Equifax would have a number of registered users (they ran some television adverts), and I still think a lot of users use same passwords for other areas, internet banking, eBay PayPal etc, which there account details will show they have

I would not be surprised if a lot of users had money taken

Also, thinking about talktalk, when they were hit, they helped users by letting them use the similar company to equifax (sorry the name I cannot remember sorry), so who is equifax to allow to look after users who details were taken

These are just some thoughts I had on the matter sorry

Many thanks

John

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