On Thursday of last week Equifax announced it had a breach of possibly 143 million people who may have a credit report on file.
Before you jump off a cliff, understand this ranks only as the Fourth largest breach in history…. big, but not even close to the largest from yahoo, about 1.5 billion from 2013-2014.
This is again a modern day Bonnie and Clyde!
Breach Occurred in July
Here is the website Equifax is giving for information that also contains a link to a page that will allegedly check to see if your information has been compromised.
Before you jump in and check your information on the Equifax site, read the following:
The website they have given to check to see if your information was compromised says yes to any inquiry according to a New York Times reporter… hmmmm
What to do? – Calmly take actions
Assume your information has been compromised !- It will most likely be eventually anyway, if it was not already …. so again no jumping off a cliff, it’s better than be held up at gunpoint “Modern day Bonnie and Clyde”
Monitor your credit from now on- Credit.com, credit karma and many others that guard your credit are a good place to go. Many credit card companies and mortgage companies send your soft, high level score monthly, keep an eye on your report for fluctuations.
Check your credit annually, here in our article on how to safely do this in what is called a soft check so as not to hurt your credit.
Have all of your credit cards send you an email after every transaction- its easy and a good safety net.
You can opt for the free Equifax year, if you do you must do this by November 21st. We would not recommend the monitoring after the free year unless you have an incident. There will likely be a large number of people who forget about the free year and actually become a paying client to Equifax after their breach… real irony !
Expect more breaches in the future, but if you have done the preventatives above, you will be fine.
This too shall pass and likely not nearly the incidents many are calling for!
End of our all our credit? …. nah … pesky modern day Bonnie and Clyde, and a need to heighten our radars from now on? … YEP !
Have a Great “Less Worrying Credit” Day!
John A. Kvale CFA, CFP
Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.
A Dallas Texas based fee only
Financial Planning Total Wealth
Management firm.
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