Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, R, says his office is investigating credit reporting agency Equifax, in conjunction with other state attorneys general. A data breach of the company has compromised the personal information of about 143 million Americans.
“My office is working aggressively to protect the interests of Missourians in light of the recent Equifax breach,” Hawley says.
Hawley and other state attorneys general have called on Equifax to stop using its own data breach as an opportunity to sell services to breach victims.
“We believe continuing to offer consumers a fee-based service in addition to Equifax’s free monitoring services will serve to only confuse consumers who are already struggling to make decisions on how to best protect themselves in the wake of this massive breach,” Hawley says. “Selling a fee-based product that competes with Equifax’s own free offer of credit monitoring services to victims of Equifax’s own data breach is unfair, particularly if consumers are not sure if their information was compromised.”
Hawley has requested information about the circumstances that led to the hacking, the reasons for the months-long delay between the compromise and the company’s public disclosure, what protections the company had in place at the time of the incident, and how the company intends to protect consumers affected by the breach.
