As far as the currently advertised matters of my business goes: Tech news reports are admittedly a bit out of my jurisdiction.
However, given the severity of the matters that have come to light today, I though I’d try to do my part in passing the news along to any parties that may be within my readership who are as-of-yet unawares.
700M+ Email Spam List Discovered
A spam list containing over seven hundred million emails has recently discovered on the internet by computer security experts. One expert by the name of Troy Hunt has taken the list and loaded it into his anti-hacker site haveibeenpwned.com:
If you have a few spare moments: I’d highly advise you to head over there and run some of your addresses through it. If any of them come up red, do yourself a favor and at least change the passwords on them right away.
Equifax Announces Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
That heading above is straight from the proverbial horses’ mouth. Equifax is referring to the matter as an “incident”.
The incident in question is a breach of their systems which has led to the data of about 143 million consumers at-risk of being up for grabs.
Everything from birth dates, home addresses, driver license numbers and even social security numbers are currently up in the air. If its a piece of digital information that could be tied to you, there’s a good chance that its somewhere in the digital ether at the moment.
Equifax made a formal announcement of the matter today, but it seems that the actual intrusion took place this past July 29th. Since then, they state that they have been working closely with law enforcement agencies to try to figure who got in and what was taken.
In the meantime, they have setup a dedicated website, equifaxsecurity2017.com, that concerned individuals can visit to see if they have been affected. If you are deemed to be a member of the unlucky lot, you will be given further instructions on how to sign up for some free credit monitoring service on their dime.
Again: I highly urge you to check out the links above to get more detailed information on the matter for yourselves, see if you are affected and what you can do to get ahead of this if you are.
Thanks for reading, be safe and feel free to pass this information along to your friends, family and associates.
