I had a letter today from Equifax. A company I have never heard of previously.

The letter informed me that my personal data had been accessed by hackers in May 2017... take immediate action to protect yourself.

Firstly, having thrown the letter on one side and not attaching much importance to it (maybe touting for business), later today I decided to search this company.

This link is what turned up, amongst other stuff. Now I want to know why this company holds my personal details, and who has either sold them on to these people or how on earth they have got them in the first place. It would seem I am not alone and another site indicates that 44milliom UK customers are on Equifax books !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41737241

Equifax, Experian and Callcredit are the three UK credit reference agencies.

I have an account with Equifax mainly because they were the ones that TalkTalk paid to try and placate their customers after their data leak.

Despite me registering some of my data with Equifax, some of their information they hold about me is wildly inaccurate. Nothing new, Experian were the same partly because they mixed up my previous address and the similar one near you granny.

Whether you like it or not, the credit reference agencies accumulate data from banks, insurance (all types) and almost everyone else you have financial transactions with.

Equifax were the hackers!!!!. Well maybe...Perhaps under the freedom of information act you could write to them asking to declare all the information they hold on you

As they are a credit reference agency, they have to release your info to you, its part of their normal day to day function. If you register an account with them you can see the plethora of companies that request a reference about you, some life insurance companies do this many times a month despite my last formal contact with them being decades ago.

They said my details are ; Name; D.O.B.; and my telephone number; which could lead to scams.
It's an American company though. I don't like these yanks holding all our information. I bet they've got our health records now too, since the rollout last year of 'sharing' that seemed to go undercover in the final few weeks, prior to being able to opt out.

Also negative information introduced,(although it was a while ago) according to Wikipedia .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equifax

Retail Credit Company's extensive information holdings, and its willingness to sell them to anyone, attracted criticism of the company in the 1960s and 1970s. These included that it collected "...facts, statistics, inaccuracies and rumors… about virtually every phase of a person's life; his marital troubles, jobs, school History, childhood, sex life, and political activities." The company was also alleged to reward its employees for collecting negative information on consumers.[10]

You can download a PDF of the regulations governing these agencies here:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2000/290/contents/made

Quite a number of letters received yesterday from all accounts. Having read more ,it is interesting to find that nobody could get through to them on the phone line yesterday, but even more interesting is that to put their (Equifax ) protection in place, we have to give many more personal details, and protection is not guaranteed .
So the Money Saving Expert says there is a choice to be made.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/n...-helplines-struggling---heres-what-to-do