Clemson Techs Offer SS# Breach Advice

On Friday, the South Carolina Department of Revenue

Those affected could be anyone who has filed a South Carolina state tax return between 1998 and now. It is highly likely that many Clemson University employees, and even some students, may be affected by this data breach.  

Clemson University’s Computer and Information Technology experts are offering tips on what those affected by this breach should do.

Their advice specifically related to the Social Security Number Breach includes:

Credit freeze: You may want to place a credit freeze on your accounts with the credit reporting agencies. This can be used to limit who can do credit inquiries and establish credit on your behalf. You can do this by contacting each of the three credit agencies: Equifax Credit Freeze, Experian Credit Freeze, TransUnion Credit Freeze. Keep in mind this can also prevent legitimate lines of credit from being established until you remove the freeze. Also, most offer SC residents this service for free, but please check their sites for any applicable fees should it change.

Free Credit Reports: Obtain your free annual credit report from all three of the largest credit-reporting agencies by going to annualcreditreport.com. After registering and validating your identity you can get reports from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. This is a free service in response to the FACT act, but you can only do this once each 12-month period.

Long-term financial information security advice includes:

Check all of your financial statements for irregularities in activity and immediately report any that you find. You need to be diligent in doing this as many creditors and financial institutions may have time limits on when you can report fraudulent activity.

Utilize the annual free credit report offered at annualcreditreport.com This site will not provide you the all important Beacon score, but can provide you all of your credit history as recorded by the big three credit reporting agencies. The reports will also show you who has inquired as to your credit. Since you only get this one time a year, one strategy is to do this every 4 months only requesting a single report from one agency. Doing this will allow you to get a report every 4 months of the year instead of all of them at one time during the year.

To read the rest of the advice offered by Clemson Computing and Information Technology experts, go to this site: http://bit.ly/Y7XC8r