You’ve Been Equifaxed

Have you been equifaxed?

If you are an American adult who has had any sort of financial life in the United States, you definitely have been equifaxed already.

Do you recall putting in an application for housing? Student loans? Do you have a cellphone plan that’s not prepaid? Do you pay utility bills? Has an employer run a background check on you?

A dossier on your documented identity is now on the darkweb. Don’t bother paying anyone to “scan” hell for you.

No need to enter your surname and the last six digits of your Social Security Number on the equifaxsecurity2017 website that was hastily and poorly set up for the breach announcement by a PR agency with no awareness of cybersecurity.

The main website of Equifax was freely accessible to the hackers from May 13 through July 30… Do you think that wasn’t enough time to get their hands on your personal information?

If you disagree, there’s a comment section down below just for you.

WE ARE EQUIFAXED USA.

Equifaxed America

Fraudulent credit-card transactions? Is that what you’re focused on because that’s what you think that hacked data will be used for? That’s why you scrambled to put freezes at the four credit-reporting agencies? And now that you have, you think you can breathe easier?

Identity theft is waayyy scarier than misuse of credit cards. Impersonation is a craft that has been mastered by criminals, and this data trove will only make their jobs easier.

How about bank accounts opened in your name? Your phone number being ported out (removed from the solid cellphone in your hands, yes)? Electricity, water, housing, insurance, government benefits, medical records…

From here on out, there will be payday loans taken out in your name, and no, they won’t show up in your credit report for which you paid credit monitoring — you’ll hear about those payday loans when the collection agencies start hounding you five or ten years from now.

Take a deep breath and approach this with Zenlike calmness and Spockian logic…

If everyone is fcked, then no one is fcked.

Hearing about a case of identity theft could be as commonplace as hearing about someone being struck by lightning, bitten by a dog, or getting into a fender-bender.

Carry on!