Va. urges Equifax to stop pushing its own fee-based credit monitoring during breach cleanup

Attorney General Mark R. Herring joined a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general Sept. 15 in urging Equifaqx, a credit reporting firm, to stop pushing its own fee based services on data breach victims, said to be 143 million people, including more than four million in Virginia.

Herring and the coalition say Equifax should “create a more transparent, user-friendly service for victims.”

Equifax is offering free credit monitoring services in response to the breach, but the attorneys general Sept. 15 objected to Equifax “seemingly using its own data breach as an opportunity to sell services to breach victims,” they wrote.

“We believe continuing to offer consumers a fee-based service in addition to Equifax’s free monitoring services will serve to only confuse consumers who are already struggling to make decisions on how to best protect themselves in the wake of this massive breach,” the attorneys general wrote. “Selling a fee-based product that competes with Equifax’s own free offer of credit monitoring services to victims of Equifax’s own data breach is unfair, particularly if consumers are not sure if their information was compromised,” according to the news release.