Get Your Piece of the Equifax Pie
Hello Hampton Roads,
Equifax is one of the top 3 credit reporting bureaus and has data on over 800 million consumers and 88 million businesses. It's in the business of collecting data and is resonsible for safeguarding that data yet back in September 2017, data from 147 million people was hacked. Names, social security numbers, addresses and, incredibly, credit card information was leaked!
Could this have been prevented? Apparently, yes. Equifax knew about the flaw in their software system and had the patch to fix it 2 months before the breach.
As a consequence, Equifax reached a $700 million dollar settlement with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) where up to $425 million was earmarked for individual compensation. The deadline to file a claim is January 22, 2020. To see if your data was compromised and if you are eligbile to participate in the settlement, check using this look-up tool.
The website to file a claim is http://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/file-a-claim.
Hopefully your data wasn't affected but if it was here's a summary of what you could get:
Thanks for Reading,
_________________________
Serving your Hampton Roads and Virginia Beach Real Estate needs.
Thinking of Buying a home?
Equifax is one of the top 3 credit reporting bureaus and has data on over 800 million consumers and 88 million businesses. It's in the business of collecting data and is resonsible for safeguarding that data yet back in September 2017, data from 147 million people was hacked. Names, social security numbers, addresses and, incredibly, credit card information was leaked!
Could this have been prevented? Apparently, yes. Equifax knew about the flaw in their software system and had the patch to fix it 2 months before the breach.
As a consequence, Equifax reached a $700 million dollar settlement with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) where up to $425 million was earmarked for individual compensation. The deadline to file a claim is January 22, 2020. To see if your data was compromised and if you are eligbile to participate in the settlement, check using this look-up tool.
The website to file a claim is http://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/file-a-claim.
Hopefully your data wasn't affected but if it was here's a summary of what you could get:
- Free Credit Monitoring (up to 10 years) and Identity Theft Protection Insurance --You can get up to 4 years free credit monitoring from all 3 credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion), $1 million in identity theft insurance and an additional 6 years of monitoring from Equifax. (Or if you already pay for credit monitoring, and do so for an additional 12 months, you could get a $125 credit)
- Cash Claims Capped at $20,000.00-- This is for those who can document actual expenses and damages due to the breach. You can also get paid for your time spent due to fallout from the breach, $25/hour up to 20 hours.
- Free Help Recovering from Identity Theft--You can call 1-833-759-2982 and get instructions on how to get free identity restoration.
- Free Credit Reports for All US Consumers --Starting next year in 2020, all US consumers can get 6 free credit reports per year for 7 years from Equifax.
Thanks for Reading,
_________________________
Serving your Hampton Roads and Virginia Beach Real Estate needs.
Thinking of Buying a home?
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