Sept 2017 Equifax Hack:

On September 7 Equifax announced that 143 million accounts had been compromised by an outside hacker, including social security numbers, addresses, and in some cases credit card information.  Since Equifax is one of the three credit reporting agencies, many Americans have accounts in Experian’s database even though they may not be familiar with Equifax directly.

Equifax has setup a dedicated website to let you check to see if your information was stolen.  The site is here, HOWEVER – as of Sept 8 many news sites are reporting that if you sign up for the free credit monitoring on this site you are also signing away some legal rights, including the right to join a class-action lawsuit against Equifax.  We recommend NOT signing up for the free credit monitoring through Equifax’s site until this issue is resolved.  It IS safe to use their site to see if your information was included in the breach though.