The number of Canadians affected by the Equifax breach rises to over 19,000
Back in October, Equifax reported that only 8,000 Canadians were affected by the security breach earlier this year. Now however, they are signing a different song, to the tune of at least 19,000. And, while this number is still significantly less than the 100,000 they originally reported, it is at least double from what we were told almost two months ago.
When they issued the statement about how 8,000 Canadians had their personal information compromised, they could not at the time confirm how many additional credit cards were possibly impacted across the country. On Tuesday Equifax made an announcement saying that 11,670 Canadian credit cards were affected, bringing the total number of Canadians impacted by the hack to about 19,000.
Information associated with Equifax’s credit card records contained the names, addresses, credit and/or debit card numbers, expiry dates, as well as Social Insurance Numbers of their customers.
Richard Smith was replace by Paulino do Rego Barros Jr. as (interim) CEO not long before the number of Canadians affected was reported as 8,000. At that time Barros expressed his apologies to everyone affected by the security breach, and vowed to improve Equifax security.
"I want to apologize again to all impacted consumers," Barros said in a release in early October. "As this important phase of our work is now completed, we continue to take numerous steps to review and enhance our cybersecurity practices. We also continue to work closely with our internal team and outside advisers to implement and accelerate long-term security improvements.”