In a Few Days, Credit Freezes Will Be Fee-Free
Summary: A federal law taking effect September 21, 2018 requires Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to offer free credit freezes and unfreezes to all Americans and their dependents, replacing a patchwork of state fees. The article also describes a $44 online lookup service that returned a person's current credit score, the last four digits of his real Social Security number and his current address even when given a made-up SSN and an old address, and notes a cybercrime service charging $35 in bitcoin to pull credit files from the three bureaus.
Key Takeaway: Krebs reports that some credit lookup portals are secured by nothing more than a username and password, or by sign-ups anyone can complete by claiming to be a landlord, and that a freeze was the only thing that blocked his own file from being pulled. The Equifax breach exposed data on more than 147 million people, but much of that data was already for sale in the cybercrime underground.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Data Breaches
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