Written back in 2014, unfortunately, we have been victims again. We have access to the credit service, but our information is out there now. Free is a good price?
Thanks to me (and Mrs. C8j) having Home Depot credit cards, we are now victims of yet another massive personal information breach. This may cause Financial Issues in the future for us. I am not well pleased by this turn of events. It seems this kind of data theft is becoming increasingly prolific, and maybe it is time for us to cut the number of credit cards we have so we have less presence in the credit world (that can be so easily stolen).
The one good thing that has come out of this is that we get a year of free Equifax Premier. That is in Canada, something different in the US. To get this service, I was given a 1-888 number to call, and after a long wait, I got a hold of an Equifax rep, who, after collecting some data on me, gave me access to their Premier Service for an entire year (usually about $20 a month service).
I hope this service will alert me in case someone uses the information from the Home Depot security breach to steal my identity or charge things on my credit vehicles. The service seems to take about 24 hours to get up and running.
I read on a Tumblr Home Page (the name of which is very NSFW), which stated:
“FREE” USUALLY MEANS “COSTS SOMETHING OTHER THAN MONEY.”
This is very true in this case. My identity info is now in the hands of cruel thieves, but I got Free Equifax for a year. Not really that free is it?
We don’t have an actual Home Depot card, but I’m pretty sure my husband made a purchase there with his regular cc in early September. If so, that means that we also need to start monitoring our cc and should sign up for the Equifax check. For now, though, we don’t know for sure if he bought something so I’m waiting for the cc bill to arrive to check. Such a pain!
Personally, I use debit for 99.9% of my purchases that aren’t cash. I’m still trying to figure out if that leaves me more or less liable than using a cc. (The debit card is NOT attached to our principal bank or our major bank account. It’s only linked to a joint acct we use to pay bills.)
Yes, I think anyone who has used ANY credit card at Target or Home Depot should be watching very closely their credit cards.
Were you contacted by Home Depot and offered access to the Equifax service? Or did you assume your inforation might have leaked and contacted Home Depot yourself? We have a Home Depot card in the family but were never contacted.
I got an e-mail from a friend, who called about it, the link on the post is what I received.