Equifax Reports Data Breach Possibly Affecting 143 Million U.S. Consumers

By | September 7, 2017

Credit-reporting firm Equifax said that hackers gained access personal information of about 143 million U.S. consumers, including social security numbers and driver’s license numbers.

Source: www.wsj.com

This one is a doozy.

Equifax, which supplies credit information and other information services, said Thursday that a data breach could have potentially affected 143 million consumers in the United States.

The population of the U.S. was about 324 million as of Jan. 1, 2017, according to the Census Bureau, which means the Equifax incident affects a huge portion of the country.

Equifax said it discovered the breach on July 29. “Criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files,” the company said.

Shares of Equifax fell more than 5 percent in after-hours trading.

The company said the exposed data include names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, addresses and some driver’s license numbers, all of which Equifax aims to protect for its customers.

Equifax added that 209,000 U.S. credit card numbers were obtained, in addition to “certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers.”