San Diego

Class-Action Lawsuit Filed in San Diego Against Equifax

Millions of people may be eligible to join a class-action lawsuit filed in San Diego against the credit monitoring agency Equifax.

The lawsuit accuses Equifax of negligence and unlawful business practices. It was filed Friday in Federal Court, on behalf of San Diego residents Ehud Gersten and Hannah Obradovich.

The lawsuit claims Equifax held customers’ private information in an “unsecure electronic environment in violation of California’s data breach laws."

Gerston and Obradovich have been customers of Equifax since they first applied for credit in 2001 and 2003 respectively.

In the suit, the plaintiffs allege the company knew about the unauthorized access to consumers’ private information on July 29 but did not alert its customers until September 7.

The company announced data exposed in the security breach included 209,000 U.S. credit card numbers and documents containing personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers. 

“Equifax has yet to disclose to consumers whether their specific personal data was impacted by this massive security breach,” the complaint states. “The dedicated website Equifax created to help consumers figure out if their information has been impacted only offers an enrollment date for its credit monitoring program.”

The lawsuit looks to recover damages, restitution, reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses including that spent on credit monitoring services.

It also requests a court order requiring Equifax to improve its data security.

Read the complaint here.

The complaint estimates there could be 143 million people in a national class and tens of millions in a state class.

On Monday, the company said it is trying to staff up its call centers more in order to handle the increased customer service calls. It also now says people will get randomly generated PINs when they try to put a security freeze in place.

The site is equifaxsecurity2017.com and the number is 866-447-7559. Equifax also says it'll send a notice to all who had personally identifiable information stolen. Equifax is offering free credit monitoring for a year, which people can sign up for at the website. 

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