Equifax Breach - What you can do NOW

Tips to protect yourself from the Equifax breach

1. Sign up for some kind of identity monitoring service (Example Lifelock)

2. Put a FRAUD Alert in with the three major Credit Bureaus

3. If really paranoid put a CREDIT FREEZE in also

4. Subscribe to some kind of Credit monitoring service

5. Enroll/Activate your Online Banking / Credit Card usage notification services (they are usually free).

6. Subscribe to a service like Albine Delete Me (will reduce the amount of publicly available information about you on the internet)

7. Pull your Credit history monthly or at the very least quarterly

8. Change your PWDs to your major financial and credit systems

9. Enable Two Factor Authentication on just about ANYTHING you can (also known as 2FA)

10. Validate your address/email/phone on all your major online accounts.

11. Keep an eye on your IRS filing, file EARLY as possible to ensure no one with your information tries to file as you.

12. Keep an eye on your address information with your major services, make sure no one tries to drop a change of address for you without your knowledge. 

13. Verify and keep an eye on your primary contact phone number. Identity thieves may try to social engineer your major voice carrier in order to redirect your 2FA. 

14. Lastly not sure if it will help but it can't hurt I would advise all my SF86 peeps that once you have verified that your information was part of this breach you should contact your FSO to annotate on your records that you had a compromise of your personal information. This "may" help in case you have a 5 year update or something and some erroneous information pops up while you are trying to redo your clearance or apply for another clearance at another agency.