[drefanzor]

Hi. Read this article a few hours ago, and went down a rabbit hole of agony. I am a victim of the equifax breach apparently. I checked my credit report (on creditkarma.com) for equifax, and realized that there were two hard inquiries which pounded my score down about 40 points. One from Verizon (never have I ever done business with them); one from Paypal Credit (same). I ended up contacting both companies and placing disputes to remove the inquiries from my records. I also placed a dispute for the verizon credit inquiry through equifax, but it wouldn't let me dispute the paypal credit because I couldn't "verify" myself. It asked me for the address of somewhere I lived 10 years ago, and I had a digit off and so it blocked me. Either way, I talked to Verizon and they said someone had applied to get a Verizon account and they were denied. Then they suggested I place a fraud alert (it was free, it's not right that I have to pay $10 to freeze my credit) on my equifax; which I did. By the way, these unauthorized hard inquiries were performed on the 19th, and 22nd (yesterday) of this month, respectably.

Either way, thanks for the article, because even though it's been many months since the breach, the effects are still being felt; I'm sure by more than just myself.

[gonehome]

The fraud alerts aren't good enough - I'd recommend freezing your credit (and just sucking up the $10) on all three credit bureaus.

That'd be Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. You can also freeze your credit at Innovis to get all four.

The freeze will require them to contact you before doing anything. The alert doesn't do much in practice (from the people I know who've had it) - it's just ignored.

[phil21]

> I'd recommend freezing your credit (and just sucking up the $10) on all three credit bureaus.

This may be the pragmatic approach, but it's also why these companies still exist.

At risk of being too blunt - fuck that shit. I will spend thousands before I give them a dime of my money. I have zero business relationship with them, and I consider such crap absolute extortion. The world is a better place without credit rating agencies. Heck, I remember a point in time where it was questionable whether these companies were even legal to begin with. So far have we fallen.

These are things people should be getting violent about.

[mcny]

> I will spend thousands before I give them a dime of my money.

I want to avoid giving them money but Equifax handles my W2 for some reason.

[panarky]

Equifax's payroll division "TALX" is a bucket of suck just like their credit reporting division [0].

Identity thieves prize the W-2 and payroll data held by companies like TALX because they can use it to file fraudulent tax refund requests with the IRS and the states on behalf of victim consumers.

Fraudsters reset customer PINs by answering simple "knowledge-based authentication" questions.

Naturally many of the answers to these questions are in the data leaked by the credit reporting division.

[0] Fraudsters Exploited Lax Security at Equifax’s TALX Payroll Division https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/05/fraudsters-exploited-lax...

[harryh]

FYI: The drop in credit scores from hard inquiries goes away quite quickly. Unless you are planning on applying for a large loan in the next 6 months it's not worth worrying about.