Go figure another data breach from a major establishment you think would have strong, robust and impenetrable security mechanisms in place.  I have already paid a visit to Equifax and enrolled in the free monitoring service resulting from this hack.  For what good that will do.  Haven’t received confirmation as to whether Paula or I have been directly affected.  The list of hacks that I have been a part of now totals nine.

The de rigueur of the hacked business is to provide those affected with free  credit monitoring  and ID theft protection for a period of time.  Currently, I have this monitoring in place courtesy of Idaho and the United States plus Anthem (hmmm, 2 of 3 are government).  Adding Equifax I now have four different services monitoring my credit.  Big deal!  Once any of these services detect something the damage is done and you have a mess.

My concern is which one do you contact to straighten out the mess?  Can your actual situation be traced to a specific data breach?  If I discover three months from now my ID has been compromised whose to say it was because of the Idaho, US or Anthem data breach.  Me thinks there would be a bit of passing the buck among the monitoring services.  What happens after monitoring expires and you detect a problem?  Guess you just go solo.

I think it is time to place a credit freeze (not to be confused with a Fraud Alert) with the credit reporting bureaus and keep my fingers crossed.  Read this article for details on  setting a credit freeze.