{"id":13047,"date":"2017-09-25T22:00:35","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T03:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/?p=13047"},"modified":"2017-09-25T21:12:58","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T02:12:58","slug":"tennessee-consumer-affairs-dos-donts-in-wake-of-equifax-data-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/2017\/09\/25\/tennessee-consumer-affairs-dos-donts-in-wake-of-equifax-data-breach\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee Consumer Affairs Do\u2019s & Don’ts in Wake of Equifax Data Breach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TennesseeNashville, TN<\/strong> – With over 3 million Tennesseans\u2019 sensitive information exposed in a data breach at the credit reporting firm Equifax, the Tennessee Department of Commerce & Insurance\u2019s (TDCI) Consumer Affairs Division wants to help vulnerable consumers plan a course of action to protect themselves from scammers aiming to mine their data through bogus websites and phishing calls.  <\/p>\n

\"According<\/a>

According to Equifax, the breach lasted from mid-May through July and exposed the data of over 143 million Americans.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III has strongly encouraged<\/a> Equifax to focus on free credit monitoring as opposed to any fee based credit monitoring and to extend the free credit freezes past the current deadline of November 21st, 2017.<\/p>\n

Additionally, General Slatery has urged the company to reimburse fees paid by consumers for security freezes by other credit reporting agencies. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur Department supports General Slatery\u2019s work on behalf of Tennessee consumers and will continue to lend support to the efforts being made to rectify this troubling situation,\u201d said TDCI Commissioner Julie Mix McPeak. \u201cUnfortunately, scammers work quickly to make a bad situation worse. To avoid criminal impostors, we urge consumers to ensure they are using the legitimate website for the Equifax data breach and to refrain from sharing their personal information with unsolicited callers.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Equifax, the breach lasted from mid-May through July and exposed the data of over 143 million Americans. The hackers accessed people\u2019s names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver\u2019s license numbers. They also stole credit card numbers for about 209,000 people and documents with personal identifying information for about 182,000 people.<\/p>\n

The TDCI Division of Consumer Affairs shares the following \u2018Do\u2019s\u2019 and \u2018Don\u2019ts\u2019 to help Tennesseans in wake of the Equifax data breach:<\/p>\n