Equifax officials announced that between May and July, hackers accessed personal information including names, birth dates, home addresses, identification numbers and some credit card numbers for as many as 143 million clients in Canada, the U.S. and Britain<\/a>.<\/p>\nInformation on how many Canadians are affected has not been made available, and it\u2019s unclear how Canadians can determine if their information was compromised in the breach.<\/p>\n
Among the Canadians who may have been impacted is Smith, an assistant professor in Brock\u2019s Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film.<\/p>\n
Smith recently had to provide an Equifax credit report to obtain electricity at home.<\/p>\n
Calling the data breach \u201chighly alarming,\u201d she points out that, in many cases, Canadians are\u00a0required\u00a0to use credit reporting services.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should be able to trust them with our personal information,\u201d says Smith.<\/p>\n
A class-action lawsuit has already been filed against Equifax in the US, but immediate concerns for consumers are more pressing.<\/p>\n
Smith believes her information is at risk and will register to enrol in the TrustedID Premier protection offered by Equifax. She will also be monitoring her financial accounts closely for signs of fraud.<\/p>\n
But she remains highly concerned that Canadian-specific information is not available on the Equifax website at this time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will be watching to see if Equifax provides details on what identifiers \u2014 social insurance numbers, names, dates of birth \u2014 were breached, and if they offer any advice to impacted Canadians.\u00a0I hope the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada can also assist impacted Canadians to understand what steps we can take to mitigate the breach,\u201d says Smith.<\/p>\n
If social insurance numbers are affected, Canadians need to know as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce your SIN is used fraudulently, it\u2019s challenging to deal with,\u201d Smith says.\u00a0\u201cIf it is revealed that SINs were breached, it could put many Canadians and customers of Equifax in a difficult situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith\u2019s work on digital literacy, data and privacy has been published in Surveillance & Society<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Computer Supported Cooperative\u00a0Work<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brock University Assistant Professor Karen Louise Smith, whose research focuses on digital literacy, data and privacy can speak from personal experience when it comes to concerns over the recent Equifax Inc. cyberattack. She believes she might be one of the victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":38329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,5,38],"tags":[5766,5027,4293],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}