>After Equifax Breach, Here’s Your Next Worry: Weak PINs
>At first, she thought it was a mistake. Maybe it had to do with the fact that she was in Panama, or that her web browsers were acting up. But no: >The Equifax PINs are based on the date and time that you set up your freeze.
>“The whole point of a 10-digit PIN is that it’s supposed to be hard to guess,” she said. “And then, they have this totally transparent algorithm for assigning them.”
>This is among the worst of the facts that have emerged in the wake of the company’s announcement on Thursday that thieves may have stolen up to 143 million Social Security numbers, dates of birth, names and addresses from its credit files. Armed with that information, thieves, blackmailers and enemies can make a lot of mischief. A credit freeze can prevent thieves from using your information to open new accounts, since lenders want to see a credit report before doing business with you.
nytimes.com
>The Equifax breach exposes some of our most sensitive personal information: names, social security numbers, addresses, birth dates and the some driver's license numbers.
>For consumers, the situation is maddening in large part because we are nearly powerless to avoid it.
>Unlike Yahoo, Equifax is not a service you intentionally sign up for and then explicitly provide with your data. Equifax, a credit reporting firm, gets its data from credit card companies, banks, retailers, and lenders who report on the credit activity of individuals to credit reporting agencies, as well as by purchasing public records.
money.cnn.com
