401–410 of 551 posts
"Customers"? I'm not an Equifax customer - that is, I've never given them my name or any information, I've certainly never paid them for a service. Yet it wouldn't surprise me to learn I'm on their list. Why call me a "customer", I'm the product you sell to banks.
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You get a unique long pin code when you freeze the account. You need that to unfreeze it. There is some "recovery" procedure, I think you need a notary or something
And that unique long pin definitely isn't stored in plaintext in the next column over in their database, right?
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/
Not just about the hack, but the fact that their "check to see if you were affected by our shit" sites include a ToS that waives your right to participate in a class-action lawsuit.
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I recently did this and highly recommend IdentityTheft.gov for assistance. It has tons of great resources/guidance for dealing with identity theft and other credit issues. https://www.identitytheft.gov/
This will make a great addition to the /r/personalfinance wiki! Thanks for posting it!
The subreddit https://reddit.com/r/personalfinance
The wiki https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index
I strongly encourage anyone in the US to put a full credit security freeze on all three credit agencies. When a credit freeze is in place, you still have access to all of your existing loan accounts and whatnot (e.g. credit cards), but lenders cannot access your credit to open new accounts unless you want them to. It's not difficult nor expensive to do, and the freeze lasts until you decide to revoke it. Whenever you…
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> In no way was Alice's identity stolen - that's tautologically impossible. I see this as you being too strict with your definition of "identity". We, as people, have multiple identities. We have one with our government, another with our employer, another with our friends, another on pseudonymous websites, etc. "Stolen identity" in this sense means Alice's attributes (the ones which Big Bank uses to identify a person…
Here's a typical story. Online loan firm gives money to someone. Months later, they default, so they call who they think is the holder of the debt. That person has no clue what they are talking about. Finds out through first ever credit report they are defrauded. Victim calls loan firm, who requests lots of proof of existence as well as a police report, before they will help them. Process takes weeks. Victim finds ou…
Suppose Alice is a "victim of identity theft". BigBank gives $10k to Fraudster as a loan, thinking that Alice is the actual recipient. Experian, Transunion and Equifax report this loan as a debt which Alice owes to BigBank. Who is the real victim? The credit reporting agencies want to convince people that the consumer is the victim, and so Alice bears the burden and risk of clearing her name. But it is the credit rep…
Agreed. Thought experiment: suppose instead that Fraudster convinced Alice that he represented BigBank, and so Alice was duped and gave her money to Fraudster thinking she was depositing into BigBank. The only thing she could expect from BigBank was politeness while explaining to her that she was duped. If it's a very friendly bank, she may tie up a manager for a couple hours, but that's it. If she keeps coming back,…
Jail time could be a possibility depending on jurisdiction. In the US, a handful of states have criminal defamation statutes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Criminal_defamation...
Suppose Alice is a "victim of identity theft". BigBank gives $10k to Fraudster as a loan, thinking that Alice is the actual recipient. Experian, Transunion and Equifax report this loan as a debt which Alice owes to BigBank. Who is the real victim? The credit reporting agencies want to convince people that the consumer is the victim, and so Alice bears the burden and risk of clearing her name. But it is the credit rep…
What Alice is the victim of is slander , not fraud or identity theft. The bank lent some money to someone who claimed to be Alice (though the bank only relied on the fact that that person knew Alice's SSN as proof of that fact). Then when the bank didn't get paid back, they told a bunch of credit check bureaus that Alice was a credit risk. This was a lie about Alice, which has a material impact on Alice's reputation.…