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Comment by voiper1 | Hacker News Reader

TL;DR: Equifax phone lines unhelpful for anything.

Suggestion, from https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/6yv4gb/off...

If you do nothing else, place an initial 90 day fraud alert on your file. This is free and will require lenders to contact you if someone (including yourself) tries to apply for credit. Government info. You only have to do this with one bureau in order for the alert to be placed on all three, and it should take less than 5 minutes:

Equifax https://www.alerts.equifax.com/AutoFraud_Online/jsp/fraudAle...

Experian https://www.experian.com/fraud/center.html

Transunion https://www.transunion.com/fraud-victim-resource/place-fraud...

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Just 90 days? I'd rather freeze my credit. I already bought a house and a car. I'm done with needing credit for the foreseeable future. Freezing all 4 accounts (including Innovis, which actually seems like the most competent of the bunch) is the ticket for me.

https://www.experian.com/ncaconline/freeze

https://www.freeze.equifax.com/Freeze/jsp/SFF_PersonalIDInfo...

https://freeze.transunion.com/sf/securityFreeze/landingPage....

https://www.innovis.com/securityFreeze/index

Experian link just provides a grey page saying "Loading"

Equifax link is dated 2008 and hijacks the back button (wtf)

TU is an account creation page

I've never heard of Innovis :)

Which is not snark at you for posting these links, just a sad commentary on these important pages.

Innovis is usually an intermediary for financial institutions to check all three of your reports. If you've ever seen a hard check on your credit report from CBCINNOVIS, it's them. They're not one of the "big three", they're sort of a 0.5.

The other sites are practically being DDoS'd by people trying to freeze their credit. Glad I did mine before it became a fad. :)

Ah thanks. I haven't ever seen that.

Curious whether there will be a measurable impact on new credit approvals as a result of this apparent mass freezing. Equifax's breach leading to second order effect of retail credit gumming up would piss off Equifax's actual clients in a big way.

This is great advice and appears to be a good thing to do, but I just feel weird giving equifax money to protect me from fallout of their data breach. It feels like I'm rewarding them for losing my data.

I bet millions of Americans, who are suddenly aware of their vulnerability to credit fraud and learning about these options, are paying for requests and freezes.

Yeah, it bugs me too. What about letting "natural consequences" befall Equifax (or rather its customers)?

I take no action now. Scammer gets a $10k loan from BigBank using my info. I get the bill and report it as fraud. Write a few letters to clear it up (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-re...). BigBank will be out $10k and is now motivated to figure out a better way to make loans.

Maybe that big bank should decide not to get credit reports from Equifax and not to send them data. It would be a way to show that self-regulation works before the government forces their hand.

I believe Equifax dropped the credit freeze charge due to the backlash [0]. The other reporting agencies may still charge however.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/your-money/equifax-fee-wa...

It didn't cost me anything to do a freeze with equifax; but I have heard of others paying. I am wondering if they only do it for free on those affected by the "hack"?

For the others, I had to pay - Transunion and Experian - $5.00 each; ChexSystems and Innovis were free also.

Yup. P/E of Equifax way up next quarter.

They did say "if nothing else". Implying that you should do more. I got the 90 alert, it takes literally 2 minutes so it's a great first step.

Now we just need a service like letsencrypt and a cron job that just resubmits that form every 60 days.

That would be an interesting idea... Except then the service provider would essentially have a database of names, SSNs, and addresses... I think we all know what could happen next. :(

There's also: https://www.chexsystems.com

For NC residents:

http://www.ncdoj.gov/freefreeze

So ... what happens if I list myself as Active Duty? They also have a 7 year extended plan.

http://www.equifax.com/credit/fraud-alerts/&

3 Main Types of Alerts and Length of Effectiveness:

  Initial Fraud Alert: 90 days
  Active Duty Alert: 1 year
  Extended Fraud Alert: 7 years

Extended Fraud Alert Request Form

To place an extended fraud alert on your credit file please send to Equifax – via Fax or US Mail - a valid police report, law enforcement agency report, or US Postal service report that allege mail theft. In addition, please provide a photocopy of one item from each of the categories below in order to verify your identification and address. The item you select from the identity category must contain your Social Security number and the item you select from the address category must contain your current mailing address.

Why do I need a police report when I have every major newspaper supporting my case?

Extended alert seems to apply only in cases of mail theft. Completely different from a massive on-line data breach, of course.

I think I should submit the form and include a copy of the articles on the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, ...

Active Duty means Active Duty in the military, so I'm assuming they'd require some documentation.

I doubt it.

On the other hand, the US Military does not take lightly misrepresentation of serving...

Someone on reddit [0] seems to have signed up for that option accidentally, so it would appear they don't require any documentation.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/6zrwdd/soo...

I did, too. Didn't ask for anything.

That reflects some provisions of the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act, which limits what debt collectors and landlords can do when someone is called to serve. Interest rates on loans are reduced to 6%. Debt collection efforts are restricted. That law is from 1940, and is written with the assumption that creditors, too, must support the war effort.

We're learning that making reasonable assumptions about Equifax is a shot in the dark at best. I wouldn't assume a damn thing with them at this point

IANAL: Claiming active duty when not maybe subject to prosecution under the Stolen Valor Act and/or various types of fraud.

Yeah, I just tried to add this via the Equifax link, entered all of my info, and got an instant "the system is down" error.

Edit: Experian displays a grey screen that says "Loading"

Edit: TransUnion requires I set up an account.

Experian ultimately directs you to this form, which you have to print out, fill in, and snail mail: https://www.experian.com/fraud/form-extended-fraud-victim-al...

TransUnion broke on the second to last step of setting up an account for me. "Technical difficulties" message.

I got the error as well. Refreshing resubmitted the form and eventually worked.

For what it's worth, the Equifax link is now working and I was able to place the alert. Experian still is displaying the grey "Loading" page.

Equifax link isn't working for me.. After filling in the form and hitting submit, I am presented with a very convenient (for them:

Our system is currently unavailable

We are currently unable to add initial 90 day fraud alert or active duty alert to credit file online. Please try again later or click here to print a request form. If you need to install Adobe Acrobat click here

plot twist: active breach investigation on going with all 3 majors

I'm having issues with it, seems to be working intermittently.

None of the 3 links work for me. How difficult to save data from a form? I'm appalled by the technical capabilities of these crucial service providers..

They very clearly don't want these forms to work. All three fail for me too. Equifax fails with "Additional Information Required" and gives me a PDF form to mail in that has the exact same fields that I've already provided. Experian is stuck on a loading screen. And Transunion says it's unable to process my request based on the information provided.

Yeah, I tried that advice yesterday and none of the links work. They just give some error after you fill them out.

Equifax worked, the other two failed for me

Hopefully saving people some time - Equifax is "unable to process" online requests - which they tell you after your submit the form. And Transunion's website for fraud alerts is currently "temporarily unavailable".

At least thanks to this, there's no need to even check and see if their mobile app still works:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/settling-score-taking-down-eq...

Equifax processed my request OK and gave me a confirmation #. I'd suggest trying again.

Equifax gave me "Our system is currently unavailable".

I was able to setup a 90 day alert with Transunion using the link you provided. It was a breeze to do so. However I noticed that even though I was already signed in to Transunion website, I had to sign in again.

The other thing I found confusing was that the website for doing this was different from the core Transunion website which was also different for Transunion's TrueIdentity website.

Overall, it's simply been confusing trying to figure out what steps to take and where/how to do them to abate negative effects of this data breach. It feels 'weird'/frustrating spending this amount of time/effort to fix issues which are due to someone else's laxity and when it seems like the responsible party is not doing as much but then I guess this is one sure and hard way to learn the lesson - you can't control what happens to you but you can control how you react to things.

Transunion isn't working. The automated phone line sends you to a disconnected number. Enabling a freeze online with them does not work and 404's.

It may be time to start calling Senators.

Good one!

Same issue after entering personal info on application.

These credit agencies have shown how archaic they're operating..

If I'm a criminal who is going to take advantage of the hacked data, and I know everybody is rushing to do the 90 day fraud alert, I'll wait for 90 days before I take action.

It is better to think from THEIR angle.

I was only able to do transunion and only because I created an account, the others failed numerous times. I hate to do another account giving my information out again but since its likely already compromised whats the worst that could happen?

Great! Got a "Our system is currently unavailable" for Equifax. Ridiculous.

I am not justifying this, but I suspect they are putting out fires and being hammered with loads of traffic.

I kinda feel sorry for the people in the trenches who had nothing to do with this. So much overtime and stress.

Anyhow, this doesn't excuse them, nor absolve them. I'm not sure if I'd have the moral fortitude to quit, where I just a peon there.

if none of us sign up for this and then flood the 3 CRAs with real identity fraud incidents, then perhaps they will take things more seriously in the future.

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