Reuters reported that Equifax Inc, the consumer credit score provider, disclosed this morning a hack exposed the personal details of potentially 143 million U.S. consumers.
Equifax said hackers had accessed names, social security numbers, and some driver’s license numbers.
In addition, credit card numbers of around 209,000 U.S. consumers with personal identifying information of around 182,000 U.S. consumers were accessed, per Equifax, Inc.
Equifax, discovered the breach on July 29 and said it had hired a cybersecurity firm to investigate the personal data breach.
It is reported that the Equifax breach could be one of the largest data breaches in the United States.
Reuters further reported that last December, Yahoo, Inc., said more than 1 billion user accounts were compromised in August of 2013 and in 2014 EBay, Inc., had urged 145 million users to change their passwords following a cyber attack.
With all the sensitive personal information, we all share, with various credit card companies and credit reporting agencies, a lot of folks may be at risk, now or in the future. Although consumers and the general public, who have been victimized by such crimes, may have recourse and/or may be able to claim for remedies against companies with inadequate security measures (depending on how and why such access was gained), it is difficult and very costly to pursue such claims.