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YES! Most people don't realize this, but credit checks are standard with many employment applications, apartment applications and utility connections (cell pho
by jstarfish 9y ago
YES!
Most people don't realize this, but credit checks are standard with many employment applications, apartment applications and utility connections (cell phones, electric, gas, etc).
You may not have an open line of credit, but by virtue of the fact that your SSN/PII was queried, it creates a stub profile in the database. Your SSN, address, license number, whatever you provided are now within potential scope of this leak-- you just have no credit associated with your identity.
Armed with the PII the fraudster can have gleaned from this leak, there's nothing stopping them from opening accounts in your name.
(FD: ex-employee. This is not a pitch in favor of their solutions, only an advisement that you should not assume you're safe.)
- kakarot 9y agoApologies for my ignorance, but what is the best method of recourse here? If I need to freeze my credit by necessity of covering the asses of other credit companies whose bad security practices lead to being hacked, I'll be damned if I will be paying any sort of fee to freeze my credit. That should be covered by Equifax.
- jstarfish 9y agoI agree with your principles. Unfortunately I don't have a solution to recommend. As with all cybersecurity incidents there are going to be a lot of vultures circling this mess, happy to Hoover up your money in exchange for nebulous "protection"-- but even Lifelock got hacked some years ago. Paying for "credit protection" doesn't also address some of the other things fraudsters can do armed with your PII, such as filing and collecting fraudulent tax returns. Have fun sorting that out. My own data was leaked. What am I doing? Admitting I'm fucked, refusing to feed the vultures, and for all else I have the number of a good attorney.