Credit histories of 143 million Americans were stolen from Equifax by hackers in May 2017 due to compromise of an unpatched Apache Struts software vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638). Equifax disclosed the breach in early September 2017.
- Read the Equifax Security 2017 FAQ
- Check if you are affected at Equifax's Potential Impact Page
- If you are affected:
- Read the FTC's Info Lost or Stolen ID Theft Checklist. The Equifax section under the Were you affected by one of these specific data breaches? heading contains specific details.
- Get and review your credit reports from https://www.annualcreditreport.com/
- This is a good idea to do once a year anyway
- Consider freezing your credit at each of the 3 major reporting agencies.
- See The FTC's Credit Freeze FAQ for more information
- Freeze pages for each reporting agency (from FTC's Freeze FAQ above)
- Consider signing up for Equifax's credit monitoring services offered for free at the previously mentioned Equifax Potential Impact page
- https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/
- https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2017/09/equifax-data-breach-what-do
- https://www.identitytheft.gov/Info-Lost-or-Stolen
- https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/09/massive-equifax-breach-caused-by-failure-to-patch-two-month-old-bug/
- https://www.annualcreditreport.com
- http://lifehacker.com/how-to-find-out-if-you-were-affected-by-the-equifax-hac-1806121695