May 10, 2018 - The massive data breach at Equifax last year, which exposed data on nearly half of all Americans, has once again gotten worse. In fact, for around 56,000 people who were simply trying dispute items on their credit reports, it may have gotten much worse. Those people had pictures of identify documents such as passports stolen. And now that the crooks behind the breach know what they look like, there is an entirely new range of crimes that can be perpetrated against them.

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The new announcement by the company says that says that the identifying documents included military IDs, passports, driver's licenses, state issued ID cards, social security and taxpayer identification cards. The company was in possession of images of these documents because consumers had uploaded them to their dispute resolution website.

Theft of these particular documents means that passport and driver's license numbers, along with other document data was released in the breach. This would allow any identity thief to create remarkably life-like forgeries. These could easily be used to walk into financial institutions to commit crimes that include draining bank and brokerage accounts without any need for a PIN or other data. New lines of credit can be easily opened too. More frighteningly, anyone possessing these documents may be able to commit other more serious crimes and leave a trail that leads directly back to victims of the data breach.

Anyone who believes that they may have had their documents stolen should consider freezing their credit file. Anyone who believes that their passport or other picture ID could have been compromised in this breach should also notify the issuing authority for that ID. Depending upon who that issuing authority is, you may be able to get a replacement ID with a new ID number.  

byJim Malmberg

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