16 September, 2017
A data breach of the credit bureau Equifax has left the personal information of 143 million Americans vulnerable to hackers.
"The Attorney General's office is here to do the fighting for you, and I urge Arkansans who have used Equifax to contact my office", Attorney General Rutledge said.
At the Equifax web portal, people have to enter their last name and the last six digits of their Social Security number to find out if their information was involved.
The nation's three credit agencies are swamped with calls from millions of Americans trying to put a fast freeze on their credit report.
"Congress has a strong role to play in preventing such attacks on our financial and IT infrastructure, and must hold those entrusted with our most sensitive data to account", Lieu wrote. In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 US consumers, and certain credit dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 USA consumers, were accessed.
You should also enroll in fraud alerts with your bank or credit card company and you may consider putting a credit freeze in place.
Equifax has data on more than 820 million consumers and 91 million businesses across the world, Reuters reported.
Equifax has said it will waive its normal arbitration clause for the breach.
Along with questionable response moves, concerns about the nature of the attack and the scope of the Equifax data breach continue to grow. Equifax is apparently offering one-year identity monitoring for free; however, the effects of this breach will go on and on for years to come. "By viewing your accounts online throughout the month, you'll be able to detect problems when they occur as well, receiving text messages that will alert you to activity on your accounts that will hopefully help stop or catch the thief". But there are sings you should look for with identity theft.
Victims whose Social Security numbers, birth dates and driver's license numbers are now exposed could be victims of identity theft. Equifax has also created a website where you can check to see if your personal information may have been affected.
A lot of people are choosing to "freeze" their credit report. It warns creditors that you may be an identity theft victim and will make it more hard for someone to open credit in your name.
