Well, here we are at the one-year mark
since Equifax had the most unbelievable,
rotten, terrible, careless, clueless data
breach in the history of the modern era!
Roughly a hundred and fifty million
Americans have deep dive personal data
that is forever out there and there for
the asking, the buying by criminals with
your social security number, in many cases
driver's licenses, credit card numbers.
They got so much information on you,
current addresses, past addresses. And
this is the kind of experience over this
last year that people kind of say it's
too big, it's too hard, I give up.
Others have been very practical and
taken steps over this past year to do
what you can to protect yourself to
protect your personal information.
Now, as for Equifax basically nothing's
happened to them. They have gotten away
scot-free and they're still extremely
profitable, a lot of people lost their
jobs, but in terms of the company they
have suffered essentially no meaningful
sanctions or penalties to speak of. And
that's something I'm not even going to
get into, it's something about modern
life and the way politics work today in
the United States. But as for you, the one
good result that's come out of this
among others is credit freezes which is
one of the best and most important
things that you should do as consumer.
Credit freezes are going to be free in
just a few weeks so you will very easily
be able to go on the websites of Equifax
or their two competitors TransUnion and
Experian and in just a couple of minutes
set up a lockdown of your credit, known
as the freeze. Once your credit is frozen
even if somebody uses stolen information
to try to take over your identity they
can't do it in order to be able to buy
things pretending they're you
or obtain credit as if they're you which
is pretty much the nastiest part of
identity theft. Now there are millions of
people who've done credit freezes since
last year but you have to pay, there's a
pain point with that, but many, many
millions more have not done credit
freezes. I have a credit freeze guide at
Clark.com that will walk you through
how to do it how to protect yourself. And
I want you to know there are other steps
I want you to take though before you
freeze your credit. I'd like you to set
yourself up on a website called Credit
Karma or Credit Sesame or Credit or all
3, where you have the ability to monitor
what's going on with your credit, have a
reasonable approximation of
your credit score and all this
information is available to you for free
at these websites so you do that. If you
are passed age 50 I want you to set up a
My Social Security account where you're
able to monitor that nobody is
impersonating you with the Social
Security Administration and trying to
get your benefits and you do those
things first before you set up credit
freeze. So once your credit is frozen you
can't do any of those things unless you
go back and thaw it. The irony of credit
freeze based on the calls I've received
from people over the last year is the
number one complaint I've had is someone
will be in a store and they want to get
instant credit and they can't because
their credits frozen. And they gripe at
me and they complain to me and after
they've had their piece, I then say this:
it's actually an advantage when you
can't make an impulse decision to buy
something on store credit.
We have a truck going by right now
give me just a second. Very loud truck.
Anyway,
with the instant store credit, store
credit is really bad for your credit
profile. It often will get you into debt,
potentially at extremely high interest
rates usually 25 to 30 percent interest
sometimes higher and so store credit is
junk credit. The fact that it slows you
down, you have to think about a purchase
you might pass on it later, keep money in
your pocket instead of buying something
that on reflection maybe you didn't need
it so much, it's actually a good thing
not a bad thing. You know this is just
one chapter in the ongoing battle to
protect your and my identity, privacy and our
personal information and now you should
know that the most important things for
you to do is go to Clark.com/Equifax
look at the steps I want you to
do step by step to protect your identity,
to protect that of your children and do
what you can to keep yourself as safe as
possible from people who mean you harm.