Equifax: (Please see Hank's prior post for main discussion)

Old_Joe

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Credit monitoring company Equifax has been hit by a high-tech heist that exposed the social security numbers and other data of about 143 million Americans. Now those people have to worry about the threat of having their identities stolen.

The Atlanta-based company said Thursday that "criminals" exploited a U.S. website application to access files between mid-May and July of this year.

The theft obtained consumers' names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver's license numbers. Such sensitive information can be enough for crooks to hijack the identities of people whose credentials were stolen through no fault of their own, potentially wreaking havoc on the victims' lives.

Equifax discovered the hack July 29, but waited until Thursday to warn consumers.

1) This information is also being currently reported in the WSJ.
2) Emphasis in above is mine.



Edit: Apologies to Hank- didn't check to see if this was already posted.

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Old_Joe

@Maurice- Well, stuff happens. I don't really initiate a thread all that often, so I almost never look at the "Discussions" page... just the "Dicussions +" page, which, as I'm sure you remember, was devised so as to avoid having to sort through a flurry of 'ted'ious links, many with few if any readers.

hank

I was highly flattered (and deeply humbled) that someone of Old Joe's quality would find the same topic of value to MFO readership that I did. His SF Chronicle story is probably better than mine from the NY Times, and his own remarks are obviously more complete and incisive.