It’s bad enough that Hurricane Irma is threatening to flatten a good portion of Florida, and a significant portion of south Texas is still bailing trillions of gallons of water out of their homes and businesses. Many will need financial assistance with mortgages, vehicle purchases, or applications for lines of credit in order to make it through the worst of it. That usually means having their credit checked. In that regard, I would strongly suggest that no one and I mean NO ONE ever use Equifax ever again.

Why? This is why.

Criminal hackers gained access to files including sensitive personal data on 143 million Americans — Social Security numbers, birth dates and home addresses — by penetrating a Web-based application for Equifax, the credit reporting agency said Thursday.

The breach, which the company said began in May, was discovered in July. Though Equifax said in a statement that its “core database” was not penetrated, the attackers did gain access to a wide range of data on what appears to be a majority of American adults, as well as some British and Canadian consumers.

Social Security numbers and birth dates represent particularly sensitive data, giving those who possess them the ingredients for identity fraud and other crimes. Equifax said that it also lost control of an unspecified number of driver’s license numbers, along with the credit card numbers for 209,000 consumers and credit dispute documents for 182,000.

Yes, you read that correctly. Equifax, one of the three major credit reporting agencies, has known for 40+ days that they were dealing with a massive data breach. In other words they were hacked.

143 MILLION people are at risk. Needless to say, this is bad for the company and far worse for those affected.