An Equifax Update Roundup

Ron Lieber got his questions answered. (Some of them, anyway.)

Equifax told me that it is not deliberately throttling down its web servers to keep people from getting freezes. (It’s tempting to believe that they would do this, given that freezes make it harder for the company to make money off your personal data.)

Cleveland.com is telling people they shouldn’t click links to Equifax’s website (or to any of the other credit bureaus’ websites) right now, just in case hackers are trying to redirect those links and steal your SSN and other info as you type it into a fake credit freeze form:

The official link being provided by Equifax is www.equifaxsecurity2017.com. Your best bet: Type this address in your browser yourself, rather than clicking on any link, including mine.

If all of this makes you want to open a new tab and search cute animal videos, Quartz interviewed Eva Casey Velasquez, president and CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, who says that we shouldn’t do that until after we’ve frozen our credit reports.

What’s the most likely scenario if a person chooses not to act? What’s the worst that could happen?

The most likely thing is that you will have your information misused in some manner and you will end up needing to resolve that issue. There are a number of types of identity-theft cases where resolution takes maybe a couple of weeks to a couple of months, and you will be distressed and inconvenienced.

(The whole interview is worth reading; Velasquez provides excellent advice.)

Consumerist is here to remind us that the hackers also stole 200,000 credit card numbers:

We’re constantly learning new things about the massive Equifax data breach, including its actual cause, that it affected people all over the world, and that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating. Let’s back up, though, and remember something important: Along with the millions of Social Security and driver’s license numbers, 200,000 customer credit card numbers were taken too.

What’s that “actual cause” they’re referencing? Essentially, there was this Apache Struts update that fixed a bug that hackers could exploit, but Equifax kept clicking “remind me tomorrow.” (If you want to know more about that, Wired has a good summary.)

As for me, I was eventually able to freeze my credit report with TransUnion—which means I’m now frozen with TransUnion, Experian, Innovis, and ChexSystems—but I have still not been able to freeze my credit report with Equifax. (They were having some issues yesterday afternoon.)

https://t.co/LGoZ2IsHUB, right now: pic.twitter.com/QkQ4d8PbzW

— Nicole Dieker (@HelloTheFuture) September 14, 2017

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