As you may be aware, Equifax yesterday revealed that they had a massive data breach of 143 Million American’s information. This is roughly ~80 percent of all credit card users who are affected. https://www.cnet.com/news/equifax-data-leak-hits-nearly-half-of-the-us-population/
We wanted to pass along some links for everyone to verify if they were affected and how to respond:
Things you can do immediately, for everyone, right now:
- Check here to see if you’re impacted. If you are included in the list of potential victims, you can choose to file a CFPB complaint against Equifax.
- Place an initial 90 day fraud alert on your file. This is free and will require lenders to contact you if someone (including yourself) tries to apply for credit. Government info. You only have to do this with one bureau in order for the alert to be placed on all three, and it should take less than 5 minutes:
- Equifax OR
- Experian OR
- Transunion
- Check your file at annualcreditreport.com and verify its accuracy; dispute incorrect information. This is a government-mandated website, signed into law (FACTA) in 2003 by George W. Bush, which allows you to pull each report once every 12 months. Dot-gov site here.
Help keep your information safe.