The IT Nerd

It appears that in the shadow of a probe into the pwnage of Equifax being shelved, news is appearing that seems to indicate that the pwnage was worse than first thought:

The credit reporting company announced in September that the personal information of 145.5 million consumers had been compromised in a data breach. It originally said that the information accessed included names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and — in some cases — driver’s license numbers and credit card numbers. It also said some consumers’ credit card numbers were among the information exposed, as well as the personal information from thousands of dispute documents.

However, Atlanta-based Equifax Inc. recently disclosed in a document submitted to the Senate Banking Committee, that a forensic investigation found criminals accessed other information from company records. According to the document, provided to The Associated Press by Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office, that included tax identification numbers, email addresses and phone numbers. Finer details, such as the expiration dates for credit cards or issuing states for driver’s licenses, were also included in the list.

The additional insight into the massive breach was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Equifax’s disclosure, which it has not made directly to consumers, underscores the depth of detail the company keeps on individuals that it may have put at risk. And it adds to the string of missteps the company has made in recovering from the security debacle.

This is exactly why a deeper investigation needs to be done. It is becoming clear that Equifax really dropped the ball here and consumers are really at risk. Thus understanding why that happened and what can be done to avoid in the future would be a good idea. Not only that, I’m pretty sure that someone needs to be held accountable over at Equifax over this. By that I mean some stiff fines and perhaps some time in the clink. But that will only happen if this issue is thoroughly investigated.

This entry was posted on February 12, 2018 at 8:48 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Equifax. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.