08 May 2018
In its May 2018 quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Equifax provided its most detailed analysis to date of the company's 2017 data breach. In the US, nearly 147 million people had their names, dates of birth, and/or Social Security numbers stolen; address information was
13 Oct 2017
On October 13, 2017, as a result of the massive data breach announced in September and the discovery that the company's website was infected with malware, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service suspended a $7.2 million contract with Equifax pending investigation. A week earlier, the IRS had announced
12 Oct 2017
In October 2017, the Equifax website was infected by malware that redirected visitors to a page that delivered fraudulent Adobe Flash updates that infected visitors' computers with adware. The company took down the affected pages after it was notified. Investigation showed that the malicious
15 Sep 2017
In September 2017, unrelated to the massive data breach the company simultaneously announced, Equifax withdrew its mobile apps from Apple's App Store and Google Play because of security flaws that meant that data transferred between users and Equifax was not encrypted in transmission. Given the
04 Jan 2017
In January 2017 two of the three largest US credit reporting bureaus, Equifax and TransUnion, were jointly fined $23 million in a settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB held that the two companies marketed some of their products as free or costing $1 when in fact consumers
12 Sep 2017
A week after Equifax's massive 2017 data breach, researchers discovered that the company's Veraz online portal, designed to let Equifax's employees in Argentina manage credit report disputes mounted by that country's consumers, was left wide open, protected only by the user name and password
02 Aug 2013
In August 2013, a jury in the Portland, Oregon Federal District Court awarded Julie Miller $18.4 million in punitive damages when despite two years of complaints and filings Equifax failed to rectify errors in her credit report that blocked many aspects of her financial life. Miller had followed the
11 Aug 2017
In November 2017, an investigation of Equifax's Work Number database, owned by the company's TALX division, found that it contains over 296 million employment records including employees at all salary levels. Every week the database receives current payroll data on about a third of the working US
10 Aug 2017
In October 2017, researcher Brian Krebs discovered that a service provided by Equifax's TALX division, The Work Number, made it possible for anyone equipped with an individual's Social Security Number and date of birth to access that person's detailed salary and employment history. Because of the
18 May 2017
In May 2017, Equifax advised a number of customers that between April 2016 and March 2017 criminals had been able to steal income tax data from the service The Work Number provided by its TALX subsidiary. The Work Number provides online payroll, human resources, and tax services to companies for
30 Jul 2003
In 2000, and then again in 2003, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Equifax for blocking phone calls from consumers trying to get information about their credit or discuss their reports or making them wait for extended periods of time in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In 1996
10 Oct 2012
In October 2012, Equifax agreed to a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission over charges that between January 2008 and early 2010 the company improperly sold lists of consumers who were late on their mortgage payments in violation of the FTC Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Equifax
17 Sep 2018
In September 2017, soon after announcing the company had suffered a major data breach that exposed sensitive information pertaining to about 150 million people, Equifax set up a poorly secured website intended to help people determine whether they had been affected. The site was flagged by numerous
26 Oct 2017
In October 2017, an anonymous security researcher informed Equifax that in December 2016 they had found a vulnerability in one of its public-facing websites that allowed them to access the personal data of every American, including full names, birthdates, city and state of residence, and social
07 Sep 2017
Days after Equifax discovered its data breach in July 2017 but before the breach was announced publicly in September, three of its top executives including the chief financial officer sold nearly $2 million worth of shares. The company told the Securities and Exchange Commission that the sales
07 Sep 2017
On September 7, 2017, the credit scoring company Equifax announced that between mid-May and July 2017 its database of consumer records had been hacked. Eventually, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission following demands from US senators, the company provided detailed statistics of
