Equifax was founded in 1899 in Atlanta, Georgia by Cator and Guy Woolford. The company's original name was the Retail Credit Company. Equifax became a publicly owned company in 1965. Today, Equifax operates globally with branches in the UK, Europe, South Africa, and 21 other countries. The company's main goal is to power the world with knowledge. They always have their customer's best interests at heart and focus all of their efforts on them. They offer financial services and advice to consumers in all stages of life. Whether they are entering college, buying their first home, managing a business, or preparing for retirement. The company claims that they are the credit experts. Their purpose is "to help people live their financial best".
Equifax has a negative past. During the company's early years, they collected tons of data on consumers and turned the information over to banks and insurance companies. The data included marital troubles, rumors, people's occupation history and level of education. Companies used this information to deny credit and loans. Consumers were furious. They could not access the reports and many sued the company for invasion of privacy and libel. Nothing came of these lawsuits.
In May 2016, the company had a smaller security breach incident. Their W-2 Express website was attacked and 430,000 individual's personal information was leaked. The individuals all worked for the retail firm Kroger. Equifax was sued and the lawyers argued that the company knew about the weaknesses in its data security due to prior hacks but chose to do nothing about it. The case was dropped as long as Equifax fixed the security issue. This issue had to do with default pin numbers that hackers could easily get ahold of. The default pins were the last 4 digits of an individual's social security number followed by their 4 digit birth year.
There was an additional security fail found 2016, by a security researcher. He found that Equifax's main website had a vulnerability which allowed hackers to send special links through email to Equifax customers. If the customers logged in using the link, then the hackers would know their username and password.
References
Brewster, T. (2017, September 8). A Brief History Of Equifax Security Fails. Forbes. Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/09/08/equifax-data-breach-history/?sh=259ced2d677c
Equifax Ltd. (2020). Credit experts since 1899. Retrieved November 04, 2020, from https://www.equifax.co.uk/resources/what-we-do/credit-experts-since-1899.html
Equifax. (2020). About Us. Retrieved November 04, 2020, from https://www.equifax.com/about-equifax/
Locker, M. (2017, September 8). Equifax Has A Super Shady History That Might Explain Its Shady Present. Fast Company. Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://www.fastcompany.com/40464730/equifax-has-a-super-shady-history-that-might-explain-its-shady-present
For a company that offers financial services for people in 24 countries, you think their data security would be efficient and impenetrable. Why do you think they they never updated their security, I see foul play if you ask me. There's so much skepticism from the weak security to the reporting of the breach.
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