Lawmakers Ask FTC, DOJ, SEC To Investigate Equifax Data Breach
BALTIMORE (WJZ)-- More than 143 million American may have been impacted by the Equifax data breach, which is considered the largest security breach ever.
The massive breach happened sometime in mid May and again in July. Hackers stole personal information, including names, social security numbers and even credit loan balances.
Baltimore firm Murphy, Falcon and Murphy joins the growing number of law firms to go after Equifax for failing to protect consumers sensitive information and exposing them to serious harm. Equifax discovered it was hacked in July but waited more than a month to reveal the breach to consumers.
"This data breach is worse than any other in the history of the country or world," said Hassan Murphy of Murphy, Falcon and Murphy. "This is horrible and they need to collaborate with us and understand they are going to have to pay and it is going to cost a lot of money like it rightfully should."
The sensitive data ranges from birth dates, social security and drivers license numbers stolen in the hack.
Experts are recommending a credit freeze to stop anyone from accessing your credit information.
"The credit freeze will lock the criminals out of opening financial accounts in your name but there are other types of identity theft and that includes medical, criminal and governmental," said Eva Velasquez of the Identity Theft Resource Center.
"This is really an attack on our whole economic system," said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia (D) and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Warner, along with 37 other senators, asked the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to look into the hack for possible insider trading.
Days after the breach was discovered, three top Equifax executives sold nearly $2 million in company stock, but Equifax denies they were aware of the data breach.
It is still unclear who is behind this cyber attack, consumers in the United Kingdom and Canada were also impacted.
To see if your information was exposed in the Equifax breach, visit EquifaxSecurity2017.com.
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