After Equifax Breach, Here’s Your Next Worry: Weak PINs<br />Dan Harrison, a Los Angeles media executive who is also a lawyer, said he already had a credit freeze, one<br />that he’d set up after a previous breach involving another company.<br />“I’m going to force them.”<br />On Sunday afternoon, in an emailed statement, an Equifax spokesman, Wyatt Jefferies, said<br />that no PINs had been compromised in the breach and that the company would soon be changing the PIN generation and reset request process.<br />They could not believe that Equifax and the other credit reporting firms, Experian and TransUnion, charge fees to freeze the credit files<br />that they had not asked the companies to set up in the first place.<br />“And then, they have this totally transparent algorithm for assigning them.”<br />This is among the worst of the facts that have emerged in the wake of the company’s announcement on Thursday<br />that thieves may have stolen up to 143 million Social Security numbers, dates of birth, names and addresses from its credit files.<br />But Experian’s site to set up an online freeze didn’t work at first, then kicked her to the snail mail option<br />because she didn’t put in the amount of her monthly mortgage payment correctly when the site attempted to identify her.<br />“They are going to have to change my PIN,” he said, adding<br />that it is the safety net of last resort for him and every other person who has had their personal information stolen.
