Equifax Hack and Strings Attached If You Get Help From Them
You probably have heard of Equifax getting hacked and some 143 million records stolen, tons of articles everywhere about that. Here’s one you probably didn’t read and it’s about how if you receive help from Equifax on this data breach, you may be limiting your options down the road.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/08/technology/equifax-monitoring-services/index.html
- You can’t get help right away. Credit monitoring doesn’t start till next week.
- You could give up some of your rights to sue. According to the article, anyone who gets the credit monitoring service must agree to terms that would limit their ability to sue, or benefit from a class action suit. That changed after some public pressure, but now this is an opt-out option where you have to notify Equifax within 30 days of accepting the credit monitoring service (wow, really?).
- Equifax isn’t promising to help fix your credit. They will help monitor your credit, but problems that arise from the hack are yours to deal with.
I am really hoping that these are really just issues from legalize templates or something like that. Hacking Equifax is the gold-mine for identity thieves, and this isn’t just some random e-commerce storefront that got hacked, it’s where ALL the sensitive data is stored.
–Kevin