In September of 2017, Equifax, one of the three largest consumer credit reporting agencies in the United States, announced a data breach that exposed the personal information of 147 million people. The data breached included names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, and driver’s license numbers. The credit card numbers of approximately 209,000 consumers were also breached.
In January of this year, Equifax settled the 2017 data breach and agreed to pay $1.38 billion, which includes $1 billion in security upgrades. Since then, the U.S. government has indicted four members of China's military on charges of hacking Equifax to exploit the personal data of 150 million Americans. They allegedly conspired to hack into Equifax's computer networks, maintain unauthorized access to those computers, and steal sensitive, personally identifiable information of nearly half of all American citizens.