09/08/2017
Equifax hacked: Canadians among those exposed by credit monitoring company’s data breach:
Credit monitoring company Equifax has been hit by a high-tech heist that exposed sensitive information of about 143 million Americans, and an unknown number of Canadians. Now the unwitting victims have to worry about the threat of having their identities stolen.
“On a scale of one to 10, this is a 10 in terms of potential identity theft. Credit bureaus keep so much data about us that affects almost everything we do.” said Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan.
The theft obtained consumers’ names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers. The purloined data can be enough for crooks to hijack the identities of people whose credentials were stolen through no fault of their own, potentially wreaking havoc on their lives. Equifax said its core credit-reporting databases don’t appear to have been breached.
