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Just a friendly f.y.i from your neighborhood IT guy. Not sure if you guys have been keeping up with the news around the Equifax hack. Basically hackers gained access to Equifax reporting agency for about three months unnoticed exposing the personal information of about half of all Americans.
This isn't a hack of a creditor but rather the Holy Grail of identity theft information. Names, social, previous addresses, mother's maiden name, all of it.
They have a website where you can check if you're information was exposed. Both mine and my wife's were.
I would highly recommend locking access to all three of your credit reports. Transunion, Equifax, and Experian. While locked your existing creditors can continue to report however nobody can run a new report to apply for credit in your name.
They give you a pin code when you lock it that allows you to call and unlock it if you need to apply for credit. You can also do it online. Nobody needs all this credit monitoring shit just lock the credit reports. If someone tries to run your credit they get the response that it's locked and no information is provided to them, no creditor in there right mind will issue credit without being able to run a report.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/11/technology/equifax-identity-theft/index.html
This isn't a hack of a creditor but rather the Holy Grail of identity theft information. Names, social, previous addresses, mother's maiden name, all of it.
They have a website where you can check if you're information was exposed. Both mine and my wife's were.
I would highly recommend locking access to all three of your credit reports. Transunion, Equifax, and Experian. While locked your existing creditors can continue to report however nobody can run a new report to apply for credit in your name.
They give you a pin code when you lock it that allows you to call and unlock it if you need to apply for credit. You can also do it online. Nobody needs all this credit monitoring shit just lock the credit reports. If someone tries to run your credit they get the response that it's locked and no information is provided to them, no creditor in there right mind will issue credit without being able to run a report.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/11/technology/equifax-identity-theft/index.html