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I know I should have checked to see if the Equifax breach affected me much earlier. I guess I just had too many other things on my mind. However, this morning, I woke up at 4 am, wide awake. The main thing on my mind was to check to see if I was included in the breach.
As a quick recap, Equifax suffered a major breach of their systems from May through July of this year. It exposed the personal identifiable information of 145.5 million consumers. This information includes names, birth dates, street addresses, credit card numbers, and Social Security numbers.
For those unaware, Equifax originally reported 143 million affected consumers. Recently, they revised the number to 145.5 million. If you previously checked to see if you were affected and weren’t, you may consider checking again.
At this time, it is unknown whether this was done by a nefarious hacker group or if it was a country-sponsored event. Either way, there is real concern that personal information could be sold to open fraudulent accounts in the future.
Here are the steps you need to do to learn if the Equifax breach affects you:
1. Go to the Equifax Website.
Equifax has created a specific website to explain the details of the cybersecurity incident. In addition, they plan to send out letters to notify everyone affected by the incident. On that website, you can click on “Am I Impacted?” to quickly find out if the breach affects you.
In addition, Equifax is offering to provide free identity theft protection and credit file monitoring services through its own program, TrustedID Premier. The program requires that you enroll by January 31st, 2018. The enrollment process is relatively painless, as the enrollment form is simple and basic.
Previously, when someone signed up for the TrustedID Premier, in the fine print it said, “In the terms of service is language that appears to bar those who enroll in an Equifax credit monitoring program from participating in any class-action lawsuits that may arise from the incident.”
However, Equifax remedied the language to say,“The arbitration clause and class action waiver included in the Equifax and TrustedID Premier terms of use does not apply to this cybersecurity incident.”
If you had any trepidation about signing up for the program before due to the language, it is good to know that they altered it.
Is TrustedID enough to ensure your protection?
Some people believe that the TrustedID Premier coverage does not go far enough. Since the coverage is good for only one year, the bad guys could sit on the information until people forget all about the incident.
What can you do to help prevent this?
2. Request copies of your credit report.
You should request a copy of your Annual Credit Report, which you are entitled to receive once per year. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion all share their credit reports on this government-authorized website. You have the ability to receive all three of the reports at the same time. You can also space them out throughout the year. While it is unlikely that the you’ll see any issues immediately due to the breach, you should become familiar with the process of checking your information.
3. Check your credit accounts.
Be vigilant and check your credit accounts at least weekly, especially with your credit cards. If you are lazy like me and you want to save time, you can utilize Personal Capital so that all of your accounts are accessible in one place.
4. Set up a credit freeze.
If an identity thief has your personal information, they may start opening up new accounts in your name. To put a stop on this, you can request a credit freeze to stop lenders from gaining access to your credit report.
If the lender does not have access to your credit report, they cannot open the new account, thus thwarting an identity thief from opening an account in your name.
However, freezing an account typically involves a fee. You can read about the fees for each state here. Please also be aware that you will need to do a credit freeze for each of the major bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Finally, you will need to lift the freeze each time you would like to open a new credit account.
If you follow these four steps, you can help protect yourself moving forward.
Ahh this is EXACTLY what I need. My husband informed me the other day that we are indeed affected by the breach, and I’ve been too busy (lazy) to try to figure out how to deal with it.
Your guide is succinct, to the point, and extremely helpful. Thank you so much for putting it together!
P.S. I lose sleep over money sometimes too >_<
Thanks for sharing Ms. FAF!!! I’m glad that this is so helpful. I definitely had to do some research to figure out what to do 🙂
Unfortunately I can’t check our free credit report from a while since it hasn’t been a year since the last check. We did do the freeze on our reports though.
I am so watchful of our money’s comings and goings that a long time ago I actually spotted a credit card theft before the credit card company.
So for now it’s business as usual until I can get my reports but our credit score hasn’t changed so there’s that.
Budget on a Stick recently posted…Getting To FI With Google’s Project Fi
I believe that if you put a fraud alert on your credit report that you automatically get to check your credit report 🙂
Great guide; I didn’t hear about the increas to 145 million users. Time to check again to see if we are on the list!
Wes recently posted…Our Patio Herb Garden
Thanks for stopping by Wes!!! Yeah it’s definitely a bummer that so many people got rolled up into this mess. Plus we can’t even opt out which is the worst part.
It’s a sad fact that it’s likely 145 million is almost every individual with credit in this country so we are likely all effected. In my case I continue to monitor and I got more diligent about two factor identification.
FullTimeFinance recently posted…An Air Bag Recall and A Free Rental Car
Thanks for sharing Full Time Finance!!! I wish we could opt out of some of these credit agencies. I don’t think at the end of the day much is going to happen to Equifax the company which is sad.
In addition to checking my accounts on a regular basis, I had previously signed up for free credit reports from credit card sites. Hence I can view my credit score and report on demand by logging into those websites. I signed up at different websites that pulls my report from different bureaus.
Regardless if your identity was breached or not, I would still check my accounts and credit report on a regular basis. It’s the prudent thing to do to protect you own finance.
Thanks for sharing Leo!!! My bank offers free credit score and reports on demand which is really nice. Hopefully that becomes more and more a trend 🙂
I check my credit score once a month through my credit card provider already. If I see a big drop I will investigate. I won’t be taking any additional steps as I don’t want to invest time into something that is reversible and probably won’t happen.
Grant @ Life Prep Couple recently posted…Money Isn’t Evil
Thanks for sharing Grant!!! It’s crazy how this can impact our lives without being our faults. Something definitely needs to be done to clean this stuff up.
Thanks for the refresher on this topic. It was big time news a few weeks ago and like most topics in the main stream media it gets dropped pretty quickly for the next headline grabbing topic. Tom
Tom @ Dividends Diversify recently posted…Turnabout is Fair Play! Let The Companies Do The Work.
Thanks for stopping by Tom!!! I have to admit that I tuned out some of the news but when I saw that some more people got affected that I thought maybe it was time to bring it up before people glazed over like I did 🙂
We did implement a credit freeze and it was pretty painless to set up. Normally I would just monitor my credit, but we actually had some fraud happen on our accounts that indicates identity theft (separate from the Equifax issue), so we froze it. Better safe than sorry! I worked hard for my scores lol.
Mrs. Picky Pincher recently posted…The Life-Changing Benefits of Movement
I definitely agree Mrs. Picky Pincher!!! I would much rather be safe than sorry when it comes to freezing the credit 🙂
Hey Rob,
Great guide here. Half the country affected? Yeah, we all may want to reconsider how we monitor our own financial security. Thanks for sharing!
Dave
I definitely agree that things need to be shaken up. How can this happen and more importantly why can’t I stop equifax from holding my info anymore 🙂
My wife and I are affected, but our kids aren’t (glass half full, right?). Feels like we’re going to need a new U.S. system for credit verification – this is too big with too much long-term potential disruption to just tweak the old one. Thanks for the tips!
Paul recently posted…My Bitcoin Strategy
I’m with you Paul!!! I definitely agree that something needs to change. It’s not fair that I can’t opt-out of Equifax having my info.
Thanks for the timely and useful info!
I have kind of a stupid question. Do I need to check all three credit reports to make certain there are no issues? Or can I just check one and assume if it looks good, then the others will look good as well?
Mr. Freaky Frugal recently posted…Retirement Savings Emergency!
Unfortunately you will need to check all three. Really stinks!!!
Great overview! My husband and I were involved in the breach, and we took some precautions. We already monitor our credit regularly and have alerts set up for transactions over a certain (low) amount on our credit cards. We are in the process of freezing our credit.
We also signed up for LastPass and encrypted all our passwords. It took a little getting used to, especially as I now use a hard token for 2-factor sign in, but it feels good to know it will be much harder for anyone to get into our accounts or emails. It also created a safe, well-encrypted space in the cloud for things like account information, social security numbers, and other sensitive information. It is set up that a designated person can request access to that information if something happens to me or my husband. Easier than updating passwords, accounts, etc in our “in case of emergency” file every time we change passwords or move accounts!
While the Equifax hack is infuriating for many reasons, there is a silver lining that people are getting more serious about online security!!
I’ve heard some amazing things about LastPass!!! I definitely need to look further into it. I definitely agree as well that this is a wake up call to take online security seriously!!!
Equifax is waiving its fee to freeze your credit. I thought I read the fee waiver was permanent for Equifax. There is also separate fee to unfreeze. I don’t know if Equifax is waiving that fee (I suspect not). Both fees are waived if you are above a certain age (65?).
Thanks for sharing Dan!!! That’s great to hear that Equifax is waiving the fees, especially since it was their fault. I don’t know why it took so long to notify the public, at least two months seems awfully long.