<prompt> Human: TL;DR - Do this now--- Thread Edited 91317 - 2:00 PM EST - Thread is now sorted by new to make it easier for new questions to be answered. You can manually sort by best to see additional advice that members of the community have found to be helpful. Also added miscellaneous additional info. Thread Edited 91217 - 11:00 AM EST - added new information on Equifax offering free credit freezes. Thread Edited 91117 - 2:30 PM EST - added new information on accuracy of you have been exposed message, Equifax PIN, potential lawsuits, limited site availability, and additional news articles. Thread Edited 9817 - 1:00 PM EST - Added new Clarification around the meaning of the arbitration agreement Additional evidence on this Equifax statement part 1 and part 2---All,This thread will serve as the rpersonalfinance official mega thread for discussing the recent equifax security breach rlegaladvice also has a mega thread on this issue if you want to focus on legal options. The TL;DR of that thread is wait to join a class action and do not sue in small claims court.Summary: Equifax Inc. said its systems were struck by a cyberattack that may have affected about 143 million U.S. customers of the credit reporting agency...Some U.K. and Canadian residents were also affected. Canadian Thread and UK Thread Intruders accessed names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and drivers license numbers...Credit card numbers for about 209,000 consumers were also accessed. Criminals took advantage of a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files from mid-May through July of this year...The intruders also accessed dispute documents with personal identifying information for about 182,000 consumers. The company set up a website, that consumers can use to determine whether their information was compromised. Its also offering free credit-file monitoring and identify-theft protection. The purpose of this sub is not to provide legal advice. However, per The arbitration clause and class action wavier included in the TrustedID Premier Terms of Use applies to the free credit file monitoring and identity theft protection products, and not the cybersecurity incident. Identity Theft Wiki - Please see the identity theft wiki for steps to take if your identity has been stolen. You may wish to freeze your credit with the different reporting agencies. Note that their websites are currently under a heavy load and may be unresponsive. For more information on what freezing your credit means, see the FTCs explanationEquifax also recently announced that they are waiving fees for freezing your credit with them. It is unclear if they plan to offer refunds to those that paid to do so before today.Using A helpful discussion adapted from ulikeasomebodie on using Check to see if you are effected using this link Either of the following messages from Equifax mean your information was stolen:Thank You -- Based on the information provided, we believe that your personal information may have been impacted by this incident...Thank You -- Your enrollment date for TrustedID Premier is: xxx Please be sure to mark your calendar... Either of these messages mean that your SSN, DOB, full address, and potentially DL number have been stolen. Assume that information is now public data, because if its not out there already someones indexing it right now. Please note that some media outliets are reporting that these messages are not completely reliable However, it still appears that using this site provides at least some information, even if it is not completely accurate. See the identity theft guide for additional information on freezing your credit, next steps, etc...Additional Information: Your credit card company may offer some form of identity theft protectioncredit monitoring. You should review the benefits that your card has to see if this applies to you. Equifax is making credit freezes free for some customers; it isnt clear if this extends to everyone or only certain individuals. UPDATE - it should be free to all - see the announcement here No word on whether previously paid fees will be refunded, but you can call and ask. It appears that, in some cases, the PIN you get from Equifax when freezing your credit is just a time stamp of when the freeze was initiated If this happened to you, consider requesting a new PIN by mail. Some individuals are reporting difficulty obtaining a credit freeze online. You may need to submit documents via mail if this is the case. There is now at least 1 class-action lawsuit on this issue. Please keep in mind that per Equifaxs most recent financials, it has a book value of equity of only about 3 billion dollars on total assets of about 7 billion dollars, so it seems unlikely that 70 billion, even if awarded, could actually be paid. urholowczak has put together a handy tree of phone options when calling the major credit bureaus hereRelated LinksThreads On This Issue:Author Thread------udrosophilawing Equifax Reports Cyber Incident, May Affect 143 Million U.S. CustomersuKlugReeOlympic Do not use equifaxsecurity2017.com unless you want to waive your right to participate in a class action lawsuitulikeasomebodie How to tell if you got Equifaxd and what to do about ituchocolate_soymilk Credit Freeze 101: What they are and how they can help NY Post Cause of BreachTelegraph Info for U.K.Tech Crunch PSA: no matter what, Equifax may tell you youve been impacted by the hackBloomberg Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over HackNew York Times After Equifax Breach, Heres Your Next Worry: Weak PINsCNN Equifax hack: Whats the worst that can happen?Administrative Items: All other threads on this topic will be locked to help keep the sub manageable. Much thanks and credit is due to udrosophilawing, uKlugReeOlympic, and many others for their timely posts and comments on this topic. Initially, this thread will not be stickied as our experience is that stickies tend to be ignored by some users. We will sticky it at a future time if needed. We sent a message to the moderators of rlegaladvice asking that they let their community know about this thread. They have linked to this thread from their community and have created their own mega thread here that focuses on legal options and remedies. If you want to know whetherhow you can sue over this, they will be better equipped to handle it although the tl;dr is probably that nobody is quite sure yet. Thank you in advance to anyone coming from rlegaladvice to help - and to anyone going there from rpersonalfinance, please remember to follow their guidelines Our normal rules still apply to this thread with the exception that on-topic legal discussion directly related to this issue will be allowed. Please keep in mind that political commentary and threats of violence are not allowed. To be clear, comments like Good job America, this is why we need regulation or The executives should be killed for this are not allowed.  <response>: With 143 million impacted that means more than half the adults in the country have their names and social security numbers on this list. I think any bank or other institution that relies on using a social security number must stop doing that now. This has basically eliminated the use of SS numbers for identification purposes. 