Credit reporting giant Equifax is notifying some consumers that some of their personal information may have erroneously been sent to other individuals due to a technical error during a software change.
Equifax discovered the problem on March 15, and notes that they attempted to call all recipients of the inadvertent disclosures to recover the files or have them destroyed. They have also contacted the attorneys general of all states where people received inadvertently disclosed information.
The material disclosed included the types of information typically found in a credit report file, but Equifax notes that in many cases, the Social Security numbers and other sensitive account numbers are masked or truncated.
Equifax did not disclose the total number of consumers whose data was incorrectly sent to others nor the total number of people who received others’ information. The firm has offered those affected one year of its own Equifax ID Patrol product.
You can read their notification on the New Hampshire Attorney General’s web site (pdf).