On September 7th, 2017, Equifax publicly announced a breach of its data belonging to approximately 143 million U.S. consumers. It later updated that number to 145.5 million and then to nearly 148 million affected consumers. By exposing sensitive personal information, including social security numbers and birthdates, and for some people, credit card numbers and driver’s license numbers, Equifax put consumers at risk of several types of identity theft and fraud. The purpose of this report is to make sure consumers have the information they need to protect themselves as much as possible, review what has happened in the last year, and point out the need for Congressional action to prevent breaches as bad as this one from ever happening again.
