Equifax Hacking

700,000 People’s details accessed in Equifax Hacking

The American credit monitoring company said hackers had access to around 700,000 British customer’s personal information, whereas it was initially said to be 400,000.

Some data such as phone numbers, driving licence details and parts of credit card information was also lost.

A spokesperson from the Information Commissioner’s Office has said they are still looking into the company’s hack case: “We continue to investigate what happened at Equifax and how UK citizen’s information came to be compromised,”

“It is a complex and fast-moving case and we are working closely with other UK regulators and our counterparts in Canada and the US.

“We have been pressing Equifax to confirm the scale and any impact on UK citizens and, from the outset, we advised the firm to alert and support victims.”

Despite the fact Equifax found out about the hacking during July, they did not reveal this information to its customers until September. As a result of this, the ICO asked the company to tell its customers based in the UK whether their personal data had been accessed.

Around June 2017, the company faced another hack in which involved 143 million Americans’ social security numbers, among other information.

The file which was most recently hacked held over 15 million UK records from 2011 to 2016.

Equifax has said that they need to send a letter to 693,665 of their British customers, informing them on how to protect against possible hacking risks.

Equifax’s Europe chief, Patricio Remon, has apologised to the victims of the hacking.

“It has been regrettable that we have not been able to contact consumers who may have been impacted until now, but it would not have been appropriate for us to do so until the full facts of this complex attack were known, and the full forensics investigation was completed,”

Victims are advised to take any help offered to protect themselves in the future.

This is just one of the large companies which have been under attack from cyber hacks in recent years.

British companies which have been affected lately include HSBC and TalkTalk.