Equifax is a company that keeps track of the detailed financial affairs of all Americans in order to gauge how much of a risk they are for borrowing money. It handles the data of 820 million consumers and more than 91 million businesses worldwide. Between May and July of this year 143 million people in the U.S. may have had their names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and even driver's license numbers accessed. In addition, the hack compromised 209,000 people's credit card numbers and personal dispute details for another 182,000 people. What bad actors could do with that information is daunting.
However the company has been scrambling to explain itself since disclosing last week that it exposed vital data about 143 million Americans — effectively most of the U.S. adult population. It's come under fire from members of Congress, state attorneys general, and people who are getting conflicting answers about whether their information was stolen. Equifax has been the focus of anger and distrust, not only for the breach but over how it initially was handled. It discovered the hack July 29, but didn't publicly announce it until more than a month later. People trying to find out if they were affected have gotten some confusing or contradictory information.
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Credits:
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/07/technology/business/equifax-data-breach/index.html
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