Hidden at the bottom of presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’s plan to erase Americans’ medical debt is a proposal that would replace a roughly $10 billion private credit reporting industry — populated by companies like Equifax, Experian and Transunion — with a public, free credit registry.

Even if the prospect of filling out a relatively brief online form fills you with more dread than the theft of all your personal data.

Equifax will pay up to $700 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission and others over a 2017 data breach that exposed Social Security numbers and other private information of nearly 150 million people.

The 2017 breach let hackers steal personal details from 150 million accounts.

SEC said engineer figured out on his own that the website he was building was for the company's security breach.

A federal law now allows people to freeze and unfreeze their credit at credit bureaus for free. Before, it cost $3 to $12 a bureau in many states.

A lot can change in a year. Not when you’re Equifax. The credit rating giant, one of the largest in the world, was trusted with some of the most sensitive data used by banks and financiers to determine who can be lent money.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a former Equifax manager with insider trading in advance of the company’s September 2017 announcement of a massive data breach that exposed Social Security numbers and other personal information of approximately 148 million U.S. customers. This is the second case the SEC has filed arising from the Equifax data breach. In March, the former chief information officer of Equifax’s U.S. business unit was charged with insider trading.

Months after the Equifax data breach, consumers are taking the Atlanta-based company to small claims court — and winning. A librarian from Vermont took the credit-reporting agency to court shortly after the massive hack was disclosed. Jessamyn West, 49, filed suit in small claims court, arguing that the ordeal she went through from the recent death of her mother that July was only compounded by having to sort through her finances along with the prospect of having her other family members’ data exposed, according to an account from cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs.

In the days following revelations last September that big-three consumer credit bureau Equifax had been hacked and relieved of personal data on nearly 150 million people, many Americans no doubt felt resigned and powerless to control their information. But not Jessamyn West. The 49-year-old librarian from a tiny town in Vermont took Equifax to court. And now she’s celebrating a small but symbolic victory after a small claims court awarded her $600 in damages stemming from the 2017 breach.

Equifax has published yet more details on the personal records and sensitive information stolen by miscreants after they hacked its databases in 2017. The good news: the number of individuals affected by the network intrusion hasn't increased from the 146.6 million Equifax previously announced, but extra types of records accessed by the hackers have turned up in Mandiant's ongoing audit of the security breach. In February, in response to questions from US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Equifax agreed that card expiry dates and tax IDs could have been among the siphoned data, but it hadn't yet worked out how many people were affected.

The massive Equifax data breach exposed another growing menace in cyberworld and the need to keep an eagle eye on your finances-- identity theft. Fraudsters purporting to be Equifax employees would place fake calls, social media posts, texts and email to unwitting customers in a bid to steal their personal details including addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.

Massachusetts can move forward with a lawsuit accusing credit reporting firm Equifax of failing to safeguard its databases or provide prompt notice of a breach that exposed the personal data of 147 million people, a state court judge has ruled. Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Salinger in Boston, in a decision made public on Wednesday, denied a motion by Equifax to dismiss a lawsuit Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed after the breach was disclosed in September.

A former Equifax executive faces insider trading charges for dumping nearly $1 million of company stock just days before the credit reporting company announced a massive data breach last summer. The U.S. attorney in Atlanta said Jun Ying, 42, was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury on criminal charges. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil insider trading charges on Wednesday.

Just imagine $5,500 times 143 million, and you'll see why this could be big trouble.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has earned a reputation as a fierce consumer advocate. She's gone after big banks and financial institutions, but now she's setting her sights on credit-rating agencies. Specifically Equifax, which endured a massive security breach last year. Over 100 million consumers had their personal information, like Social Security numbers and addresses, compromised in the hack. Now Warren and Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, are introducing legislation that would levy harsh penalties for similar types of security breaches at Equifax and other rating agencies.

After Equifax’s negligence allowed hackers to steal the personal information of 145.5 million Americans, the company promised to give everyone free credit monitoring for a year. But House Democrats have formally requested that Equifax extend the monitoring from one year to three years. Even that, however, feels pretty damn inadequate.

Eyeing more secure alternatives to Social Security numbers, lawmakers in the U.S. are looking abroad. Today, the Senate Commerce Committee questioned former...

Equifax Inc. said on Friday four of its executives who sold shares before the credit-reporting firm disclosed a massive data breach that wiped out billions from its market value were not aware of the incident when they made the trades.

The massive hacking of Equifax, one of the three major credit reporting agencies, could have a catastrophic impact on next year’s tax season with the returns of over 100 million Americans now at risk, according to a warning to the IRS and Treasury Department. The hacking revealed the Social Security numbers of some 143 million Americans, making them extremely vulnerable to tax filing fraud, and the loss of their checks, which this year averaged $3,120.