Breach

In May of 2017, Equifax had been hacked. The hackers managed to access about 145.5 million users' data which included their names, Social Security Numbers, birthdays, addresses and driver's license numbers. In addition, 209 thousand users' credit card information was accessed. Hackers managed to access this information by inputing malicious code into a form on Equifax's website and cause an error which would then activate the code.

Impact

In total, the hack affected 145.5 million users, including people from Canada and the United Kingdom and even people who have never used Equifax becore. The hacking has caused people to lose trust in Equifax to keep their information secure and possibly even caused people to lose trust in technology as a whole, as some people may assume that if Equifax can't keep their own highly important and private data secure, then smaller companies and businesses may not be able to keep their data secure either.
The hacking targeted everybody equally. Both of my parents were victims of the hack as well as my aunts, some of which have never used Equifax in their lives.

Aftermath

In July of 2019, Equifax reportedly agreed to pay about 650 million dollars towards compensating victims of the hack. Anybody can check if they were effected by the hack at this website. Effected users can choose between a 125 dollar cash compensation or free credit monitering services. Users can also be elligible for up to 20 thousand dollars in cash for the time they spent remedying fraud, identity theft, or other misuse of personal information caused by the data breach, or purchasing credit monitoring or freezing credit reports, out-of-pocket losses resulting from the data breach and up to up to 25% of the cost of Equifax credit or identity monitoring products paid for in the year before the data breach announcement. Users are eligible for at least 7 years of free assisted identity restoration services to help remedy the effects of identity theft and fraud. (Obtained from the official breach information website)