Right now, half of America may as well post its personal details online for all to see. That’s because, as the Associated Press reports, the credit monitoring firm Equifax has suffered a huge data breach that saw names, social security numbers, birth dates, and addresses of 143 million Americans stolen by hackers.
It’s a huge amount of user data to be compromised, and will massively damage the reputation of the company. Even more frustrating for most people is the fact that Equifax identified the attack on July 29, but only published details of it on Thursday.
So far, the company has yet to explain the delay, though it’s come to light that some of its execs sold their shares in the firm during the intervening period. Nevertheless, consumers will be concerned about what may have been done with their data in the meantime. (If you’re worried, Wired has a good explanation of what you should do to cover your back.)
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