How To Deal With Equifax For The Average Person
In the U.S. there is about 245MM adults and about 45MM of them don’t have any credit history. Preliminary counts suggest that 143MM people were affected by Equifax’s breach or about 71% of adults with credit. Let’s talk in plain-language about what this means for you.
What is Equifax and why do they know me?
They’re a consumer reporting agency. They tell people how good you are at giving other people money on time, in large amounts, etc.
There are three major ones: Equifax, Transunion, and Experian.
Sadly, there is also a fourth one: Innovis.
The moment any of these agencies start tracking you varies. It could be the first time you signed up with a utility company or a student loan. If you have a credit card, you probably have a credit history.
If you’re a kid or you have a kid, unless you’ve done something to start a credit history for your child, it’s unlikely any of of these companies know your child exists.
Were you affected?
Probably.
71% of adults with credit were affected. To put that in perspective, smokers only account for 30% of all cancer deaths.
You could try to contact Equifax to confirm whether or not you were part of the leak, but it seems they don’t have a good handle on it. Writers from Vice tried to check Equifax themselves and had no conclusive affirmation.
I haven’t checked, but I’ll take my chances that it’s affected me.
Should you take up Equifax’s promise to help?
Probably not.
Based on their leadership’s behavior, their response and inability to alert people, I’m not sure their monitoring service is worthwhile.
TrustID is just a monitoring service and it’s pretty useless. They just tell you when someone is likely doing something with your identity and aren’t any position to help stop or recover your identity. Some check once a month and others are set-up for any alert or odd behavior.
What if I want my credit monitored?
People are probably giving you access to that for free!
Most major banks like Chase or credit unions already offer this for free to their customers. Thanks to how easy it is for different companies or agencies to talk to each other these days, it’s a great free service to offer customers.
Many financial institutions that depend on your repeated business want you to be in good financial health and it costs them money if your identity is stolen. It’s in their best interest to offer this small service.
A lot of credit card companies offer free monitoring too whether or not you’re a customer. Capital One and Discover are both moving into online banking and it helps them to build a relationship with you this way.
If you want to avoid your bank or a credit card company’s service, I don’t blame you. Trust is a premium relationship businesses ought to earn from you.
Credit Karma offers free credit monitoring and their revenue model is partnerships with lenders. They get paid showing you offers for loans or credit cards that might help you pay down your debt.
What if I want to monitor my own credit?
Me, too buddy.
Every agency offers an annual free credit report. With four agencies, that means you can check every 3 months.
Remember, they already have your info, so it’s not a huge deal to register and check your free report once in a while.
Try not to sign up for their services. They tend to be opt-out. That means they’ll charge you a few dollars a month for their services until you go through a hard to find way of stopping the charges. Real annoying stuff.
What is a credit freeze?
It’s when one of the reporting agencies won’t let someone access your credit history. It only affects new requests.
Businesses like your current bank, utility companies, cellphone provider, or a monitoring service like Capital One or Credit Karma will still have access to your credit and can report you to these agencies for good or bad behavior.
Should I freeze my credit?
You can, but they only stop about 5% of identity thefts.
You contact each of the agencies (Equifax, Experian, Transunion, and Innovis) and ask them to freeze your credit. Equifax is offering it for free and it’s different from their credit monitoring service.
If you know someone will want to request your credit history, you’ll have to contact the agency they’re using to unfreeze it. There will be a fee to do that and freeze your credit again.
Personally I won’t.
Wait… what about the other forms of identity theft?
You got me. Yup, only 5% is from credit reporting, so where is all that other identity theft?!
Identity theft isn’t just social security numbers. It’s pre-approved credit, insurance fraud, and stolen credit card numbers. If someone has your social security number, they still need access to an assortment of data about you to do things like take out loans.
43% of all identity theft is related to taxes according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Between dumpster diving and personal knowledge, you’re more likely to have your identity stolen by someone you know.
This is why it’s important to monitor credit whether it’s yourself or a service. There’s a lot of ways it can happen, and the sooner you take care of it, the better.
You can read more about the different ways someone can steal your identity and work yourself into an anxious nightmare, but like getting your house robbed or a bike stolen, the basic precautions help a lot and will keep you pretty safe.
It’s often more about reacting quickly than establishing the strongest security.
What if my identity was stolen?
Go here and start fixing the problem: https://identitytheft.gov/
If you have an accountant, talk to them. If you have a lawyer, talk to them.
If you have none of those things, the government’s site is pretty helpful in triaging the bleeding cash and finding free resources to help you navigate the paperwork with different companies and agencies to fix it.
What are precautions I can take besides monitoring?
There’s a lot of ideas.
- Get a cheap paper shredder and shred any and all financial mail when you’re done with it.
- Pick up your mail regularly. Seriously.
- Have more than one email and spread out your online buying or subscriptions. If something is hacked, it limits the damage.
- Don’t put any of your personal identifying info like home address or phone numbers online. It amazes me how many people talk about their vacation dates or post their addresses in public Facebook profiles after saying how much they hate ______ people.
- Request a new credit or debit card from your providers more often than they mail them. In addition to cutting off businesses that require you to opt-out, when there’s a big data hack like what happened with Target, they’ll have an old credit card number.
Hope this helps!
