Information on 143 million exposed Consumer info

High-tech heist at Equifax creates fears of massive identity theft

SAN FRANCISCO — Credit monitoring company Equifax has been hit by a high-tech heist that exposed the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of about 143 million Americans. Now the unwitting victims have to worry about the threat of having their identities stolen.

The Atlanta-based company, one of three major U.S. credit bureaus, said Thursday that “criminals” exploited a U.S. website application to access files between mid-may and July of this year.

The theft obtained consumers’ names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers. The purloined data can be enough for crooks to hijack the identities of people whose credentials were stolen through no fault of their own, potentially wreaking havoc on their lives.

“On a scale of one to 10, this is a 10 in terms of potential identity theft,” said Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan. “Credit bureaus keep so much data about us that affects almost everything we do.”

Lenders rely on the information collected by the credit bureaus to help them decide whether to approve financing for homes, cars and credit cards. Credit checks are even sometimes done by employers when deciding whom to

EQUIFAX

Equifax has established a website where people can check to see if their personal information might have been stolen.

▶ www.equifaxsecurity 2017.com

▶ 866-447-7559

hire for a job.

Equifax discovered the hack July 29 but waited until Thursday to warn consumers. The Atlanta-based company declined to comment on that delay or anything else beyond its published statement. It’s not unusual for U.S. authorities to ask a company hit in a major hack to delay public notice so that investigators can pursue the perpetrators.

“This is clearly a disappointing event for our company, and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and

what we do,” Equifax CEO Richard Smith said in a statement. “I apologize to consumers and our business customers for the concern and frustration this causes.”

This isn’t the biggest data breach in history. That indignity still belongs to Yahoo, which was targeted in at least two separate digital burglaries that affected more than 1 billion of its users’ accounts throughout the world.

But no Social Security numbers or drivers’ license were taken in the Yahoo break-in.

Equifax’s security lapse could be the largest involving the theft of Social Security numbers, one of the most common methods used to confirm a

person’s identity in the U.S. It eclipses a 2015 hack at health insurer Anthem Inc. that involved the Social Security numbers of about 80 million people.

Any data breach threatens to tarnish a company’s reputation, but it is especially mortifying for Equifax, whose entire business revolves around providing a clear financial profile of consumers that lenders and other businesses can trust.

“This really undermines their credibility,” Litan said. It also could undermine the integrity of the information stockpiled by two other major credit bureaus, Experian and Transunion, because they hold nearly all the data that Equifax does, Litan said.