Steps to take now
Have you still not checked to see if you were potentially impacted by the hack that affected as many as 143 million people? Not having dealt directly with Equifax doesn't guarantee your safety. "You may have never used Equifax yourself, or even heard of it," said CNN. "Either way, the credit reporting agency could still have a lot of your personal information. To find out if your data was compromised by the hack, go here."
Keep in mind that you'll have to enter your last name and the last six numbers of your Social Security number to check. Regardless of whether or not they believe you were impacted, you'll be prompted to enroll in their TrustID Premier credit monitoring service, which will be free for a year. Despite earlier concerns, "Equifax has confirmed that signing up for TrustID Premier will not prevent you from joining a class-action suit over this issue," said PCWorld.
Armed with this information, you can go about taking further steps to protect your credit and prevent thieves from stealing your identity. Pull your credit reports for free once a year at www.annualcreditreport.com. Look them over carefully to make sure there are not any fraudulent accounts and/or charges. If you see anything, get on the phone with the creditor right away and start the dispute process. If you're in the process of applying for a home loan or are under contract, you'll also want to call your lender immediately to alert them to what you found.
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