How You Should Respond to the Equifax Data Breach

Equifax Data Breach

If you haven’t heard there was a large Equifax data breach recently. The early estimates are that as many as 143 million will be impacted, this means your Name, Social Security Number, Birthdate, etc.. could all have been released through this breach. As soon as possible I would like you to do two things:

1. Go to https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/ and scroll to the bottom and click “potential impact”
   1. Fill out your last name and the last six of your social and they will tell you if you may have been impacted. I was and you likely will have been as well. So…
2. Due to the breach Equifax is offering credit-file monitoring and identity-theft protection for one year for free. Please enroll, I did and while it doesn’t mean you will be 100% protected it does mean that you can get ahead of any identity theft if it occurs. You will see the enrollment option on the same screen that it tells you if you were impacted.
   1. Even if you weren’t impacted they are still offering the one year services for free so you might as well enroll here: https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/enroll/

You also have the option of contacting all three credit bureaus and freezing your credit. There is a fee associated with this but if you know you won’t need your credit checked because you won’t be financing anything for awhile it offers another level of protection. You will just have to remember to unfreeze this prior to applying for credit. Again, you will likely be charged some nominal fee for unfreezing your credit as well.

If you haven’t recently reviewed your financial plan you should contact your CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Practitioner.

If you aren’t currently working with a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Practitioner you can learn more about my practice HERE or you can find other CFP® Practitioners HERE