Recently my friend Ken sent me a link to a Washington Post article about protecting your Social Security number.
The article was in response to the breach at Equifax—one of the top three credit reporting agencies—that had exposed the personal information of 145.5 million people earlier this year.
On Oct. 12 the company said it had disabled one of its customer help online pages and is investigating another possible cyber breach.
Here are the facts, according to Equifax. The breach lasted from mid-May through July. The hackers accessed people’s names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. They also stole credit card numbers of about 209,000 people and dispute documents with personal identifying information of about 182,000 people.
The Federal Trade Commission offered steps to help protect your information from being misused. In broad strokes, it