Equifax Overview

Equifax

Equifax, a global provider of data, analytics, and technology, contributes significantly to the economy by assisting businesses in a wide range of sectors, including automotive, communications, utilities, financial services, fintech, healthcare, insurance, mortgage, professional services, retail, e-commerce, and government agencies, to make more informed decisions. It is able to generate the insights that underpin decisions that move people forward because of the distinctive combination of its differentiated data, analytics, and technology.

Along with Experian and TransUnion, it is one of the three largest consumer credit reporting agencies. Over ten million electronic transactions are handled or facilitated daily by the company for 300,000 customers worldwide. 24 nations in the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific operate or invest in Equifax. . It is a global company with over 10,000 employees and trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol EFX. The company generates US$3.1 billion in annual revenue. The headquarters of Equifax is in Atlanta, Georgia.

Cator and Guy Woolford established Equifax in 1899 under the name Retail Credit Company. The business grew to become one of the largest credit bureaus in North America in the 1960s, with locations in both the United States and Canada. Even though it continued to run credit reports, the majority of the work the company did was reporting to insurance companies when people applied for new life, auto, fire, and medical insurance policies. RCC also looked into insurance claims and made employment reports when people were looking for new jobs.

Retailers Commercial Agency, a subsidiary at the time, was in charge of the majority of the credit work. The Fair Credit Reporting Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1970 after the company computerized its records, making personal information more easily accessible. Consumers were granted rights to information about them that was stored in corporate data banks as a result of this legislation. The Retail Credit Company changed its name to Equifax in 1975 as a way to improve its public image as a result of the hearings.

In the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, Equifax entered competition with businesses as it expanded into commercial credit reports. In the past, it provided digital certification services. In September 2001, it sold those services to GeoTrust. Certegy, which later acquired Fidelity National Information Services in 2006, was formed when Equifax spun off its payment services division in 2001. Anakam, a San Diego, California-based identity verification software company that pioneered SMS (text-message-based) two-factor authentication, was acquired by Equifax in October 2010.

In October 2011, a business intelligence company with its headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina, was acquired by Equifax. eThority has remained in Charleston despite its partnership with Equifax’s St. Louis-based TALX. The largest credit reference agency in Australia at the time, Veda, was acquired by Equifax in February 2016.

Between October 2012 and September 17, 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau received over 57,000 consumer complaints about Equifax. The majority of these complaints were related to the company’s incomplete, inaccurate, out-of-date, or misattributed information. 

Cybercriminals gained access to the personal information of approximately 145.5 million Equifax customers in the United States, according to Equifax’s announcement in September 2017. On March 1, 2018, Equifax announced that an additional 2.4 million American customers had been affected by the breach, bringing the total number of Americans affected to 147.9 million. The business claimed on July 29, 2017, that it had discovered evidence of the cybercrime. The hackers figured out how to remain in Equifax frameworks undetected for roughly 134 days. Approximately 19,000 Canadians and 15.2 million Brits were affected as well.

By selling company stock before the breach was made public, Jun Ying, the former CIO of Equifax, was accused of illicit insider trading in March 2018. Ying pleaded guilty, received a sentence of four months in prison and one year on supervised release following an FBI investigation, was fined, and was required to make restitution. Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu, a manager at Equifax, also pleaded guilty to insider trading and was given an 8-month home confinement sentence.

The New York Times, the New York Post, and other media outlets reported in July 2019 that Equifax had agreed to pay the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approximately $650 million to settle investigations by several state attorneys general, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the FTC as well as a consumer class-action lawsuit related to the data breach.

In July 2020, Equifax reported that the company had increased its position in commercial payment technology solutions by purchasing Ansonia Credit Data (Ansonia), a significant source of consumer credit, payments, and invoice receivables (AR) data utilized by financial institutions, other borrowers, and businesses in the shipping and logistics industries.

Equifax sells consumer credit and insurance reports and related analytics to businesses in a variety of industries, primarily in the business-to-business market. Retailers, insurance companies, healthcare providers, utilities, government agencies, and other financial institutions are among the business customers. Other financial institutions also serve as customers.

Software, analytics, demographic data, and credit reports for businesses are all offered by Equifax. Additionally, it provides commercial credit reports with information about businesses of all sizes, both financial and non-financial. Through the National Consumer Telecom and Utilities Exchange, which is an exchange of non-credit data such as consumer payment history on telecommunications and utility accounts, it collects and provides data.

In addition, Equifax began providing identity theft and credit fraud prevention products to the credit consumer market in 1999. Residents of the United States are required by law to receive one free disclosure of their credit file each year from Equifax and other credit monitoring agencies. “FraudIQ Authenticate Device” is one fraud prevention product that Equifax offers that is based on device fingerprinting.

Breach in security in March 2017

Bloomberg News reported on September 18, 2017, that Equifax had experienced a “major breach of its computer systems” in March 2017, and that it had begun “notifying a small number of outsiders and banking customers” about this attack at the beginning of March.

Bloomberg reports that a person with knowledge of the breach thought the intrusion in early March might have been carried out by the same person who broke into Equifax’s computer systems again in May. Bloomberg claims that Equifax hired Mandiant, a company owned by FireEye, Inc., to help with the March attack investigation. The same network safety firm was employed following the May-July breach.

Data on Argentine consumers exposed

In September 2017, Brian Krebs uncovered that the Argentine arm of Equifax had left confidential information from around 14,000 shoppers, and in excess of 100 staff individuals, accessible to anybody who entered “administrator” as both the username and secret key for one of its web-based frameworks.

Website malware

On October 12, 2017, it was said that the Equifax website offered drive-by downloads of malware to visitors. The malware was repackaged as an Adobe Flash update. Since only three out of 65 top anti-malware products at the time offered protection against the particular malware, many visitors to the Equifax website were at risk of having their computers infected.

It was discovered on October 13, 2017, that the attack was carried out by stealing third-party analytics JavaScript from the Digital River brand FireClick. A $7.2 million contract with Equifax was reportedly suspended by the US Internal Revenue Service on October 13, 2017, as a result of the attack.

In 2014, St. Louis resident Kimberly Haman filed a lawsuit against Equifax and Heartland Bank for reporting her death. The bank immediately investigated and contacted the credit reporting agencies after Haman reported that she was still alive, according to a spokesperson for Heartland Bank. After a reporter’s inquiry, an Equifax spokesperson informed the Post-Dispatch that “Equifax blocked the Heartland account information from appearing on Haman’s credit report.”

God Gazarov filed a lawsuit against Equifax in New York federal court in April 2014, claiming that the company incorrectly reported him as having no credit history due to his unusual first name.

Due to its infringement of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the company has been assessed fines by the FTC twice. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion were all fined $2.5 million in 2000 for blocking and delaying phone calls from customers seeking credit information. The FTC sued Equifax in 2003 for the same reason, and it settled with the company for a $250,000 fine.

Equifax reached a global settlement in January 2020 with the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 50 states and territories of the United States. There were open suggestions for people who were affected by the data breach to file claims against it. People who were affected by the data breach will receive up to $425 million as part of the settlement. In the end, regulators and Equifax settled for up to $700 million.

• 2021’s Equifax revenue was $4.924 billion, a 19.29% increase from 2020. For the twelve months ending September 30, 2022, it generated $5.177 billion in revenue—an increase of 8.11 percent year-over-year.
• Equifax reported $1.138 billion in annual operating income in 2021, a 68.19% increase from 2020. Its operating income increased by 7.28 percent year-over-year to $1.132 billion for the year that ended September 30, 2022.
• The annual net income of Equifax in 2021 was $0.744 billion, a 43.09 percent increase from 2020. The twelve months ending September 30, 2022 saw a 1.95 percent increase in its net income to $0.710 billion.
• Equifax’s total assets in 2021 totaled $11.041B, an increase of 14.87 percent from 2020.
• Shareholder equity for Equifax in 2021 was $3.601 billion, up 12.18 percent from 2020.