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Hackers basically just took everyone's financial information from Equifax

News of a massive security breach at credit-monitoring service Equifax clobbered the company’s shares, Thursday and during trading Friday, as the price of its stock tumbled by roughly 13 percent.

The Atlanta, Georgia-based company announced Thursday afternoon that hackers had exploited a vulnerability in its web site to access the the personal details of as many as 143 million U.S. consumers.

The hack occurred in May and the it continued until July, when the company became aware of it. The intruders acquired access to names, birthdates, Social Security numbers, and drivers license information, among other goodies. They also got to more than 200,000 credit card numbers and credit dispute documentation with identifying details for more than 180,000 people. Information belonging to some Canadian and British consumers were also affected.

Of course Equifax isn’t the only entity that’s suffered security breaches exposing sensitive information. A hack at health insurer Anthem announced in 2015 exposed roughly 80 million Social Security numbers, for example. Last year, Yahoo informed the world that hackers had gotten account information from over 1 billion users worldwide. Target, J.P. Morgan, Home Depot, and even the U.S. government’s Office of Personnel Management have stepped forward with similar confessions that they’d been hacked in recent years. Although, the Equifax breach may be the largest ever hack of U.S. Social Security numbers.

Here are some other things to keep in mind:

  • The exposure of some 143 million people would be a fairly healthy chunk of the U.S. adult population, which is roughly 240 million.
  • “If you have a credit report, chances are you may be in this breach. The chances are much better than 50 percent,” Pamela Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum told the New York Times.
  • Bloomberg News reported that three senior Equifax executives, including the company’s chief financial officer, sold shares in the days after the breach was discovered. Equifax says that those executives had not been informed that the hack had occurred.