Public Service Announcement about the Massive Equifax hack and what you can do about it

You, yes you, have been hacked!

Between killer hurricanes in the South and Southeast and the latest shenanigans out of Washington, you should know that Equifax, the credit-reporting company, has had 143 million files stolen by hackers. This isn’t just your name and e-mail password, as was the case with Yahoo! No, it’s your Social Security number, your driver’s license, and other facts and figures that can be used to set up new accounts in your name or stick you with expensive purchases.

What can you do? I suggest you sit down and read Brad Chacos’s article at PCWorld.com on this topic. He tells you about Equifax’s Web site to check to see if something occurred to you.

At the very least, request your credit reports from annualcreditreport.com not those phony-baloney sites that charge for this service. annual credit report. com is the only authorized one that will send you annually a free report from the three credit reporting companies.

If you really want to send your blood pressure and/or blood sugar soaring, read Sascha Segan’s editorial at PC Magazine.com. Usually, Sascha sticks to cut and dry technical issues. But today, he’s steamed!

For more reporting about this issue, go to arstechnica.com Start with Sean Gallegher’s report.

Don’t just sit there, do something proactive about this! Unless you want to pay for some hacker’s new bedroom furniture and big-screen TV! Prayer isn’t going to do the trick.

Tom Briant

Editor, MacValley Blog