How to Cancel Equifax

• Equifax (Canada)

Equifax Inc., along with Experian and TransUnion, is an American multinational consumer credit reporting agency headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. It is one of the three largest consumer credit reporting agencies (together known as the "Big Three"). Equifax collects and aggregates data on over 800 million individual consumers and over 88 million businesses around the world. Equifax sells credit monitoring and fraud prevention services directly to consumers in addition to credit and demographic data and services to businesses.

Equifax has operations or investments in 24 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Equifax has over 14,000 employees worldwide and a yearly revenue of nearly $5 billion. It is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol EFX.

In 1899, Cator and Guy Woolford established Retail Credit Company in Atlanta, Georgia. The company had offices all over the United States and Canada by 1920. By the 1960s, Retail Credit Company had grown to become one of the nation's largest credit bureaus, with files on millions of Americans and Canadians. Despite the fact that the company continued to do credit reporting, the majority of its business was making reports to insurance companies when people applied for new insurance policies such as life, auto, fire, and medical. When people were looking for new jobs, RCC also investigated insurance claims and filed employment reports. Retailers Commercial Agency, a subsidiary, handled the majority of the credit work at the time.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Retail Credit Company's information holdings and willingness to sell its information drew criticism. It gathered "… facts, statistics, inaccuracies, and rumors… about virtually every phase of a person's life; his marital problems, jobs, school history, childhood, sex life, and political activities," according to the website. The company was also accused of rewarding its employees for gathering negative information on customers.

After the company computerized its records, making personal information more accessible, the United States Congress held hearings that led to the passage of the Fair Credit Reporting Act in 1970. This legislation granted consumers access to information about them stored in corporate databanks. The hearings allegedly prompted the Retail Credit Company to change its name to Equifax in 1975 in order to improve its image.

Equifax expanded into commercial credit reports on businesses in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, where it competed with companies like Dun & Bradstreet and Experian. Insurance reporting has been phased out. The company also had a division that sold specialized credit information to the insurance industry, but this service, as well as the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) database, was spun off as ChoicePoint in 1997. Equifax previously provided digital certification services before selling them to GeoTrust in September 2001. Equifax spun off its payment services division in 2001, forming the publicly traded company Certegy, which later acquired Fidelity National Information Services in 2006. As a result of this reverse acquisition merger, Certegy effectively became a subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial.

Equifax announced in October 2010 that it was acquiring Anakam, a San Diego, California-based identity verification software company that invented and pioneered SMS (text-message-based) two-factor authentication. The deal's terms were not disclosed. In October 2011, Equifax acquired eThority, a business intelligence (BI) firm based in Charleston, South Carolina. eThority has partnered with TALX, an Equifax business unit based in St. Louis, and has remained in Charleston.

Equifax acquired Veda, the largest credit reference agency in Australia at the time, in February 2016. In September 2015, Veda acquired the Australian market research and opinion polling company ReachTEL, which continues to produce opinion polls in Australia.

From October 2012 to September 17, 2017, Equifax received over 57,000 consumer complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with the majority of complaints relating to incomplete, inaccurate, outdated, or misattributed information held by the company.

Equifax announced a cyber-security breach in September 2017, claiming that it occurred between mid-May and July 2017, during which cybercriminals accessed the personal information of approximately 145.5 million U.S. Equifax customers, including their full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and driver license numbers. Equifax also confirmed that the attack compromised the credit card information of at least 209,000 customers. On March 1, 2018, Equifax announced that 2.4 million more U.S. customers had been affected by the breach, bringing the total number of Americans affected to 147.9 million. On July 29, 2017, the company claims to have discovered evidence of the cybercrime event. Residents of the United Kingdom (15.2 million) and Canada (approximately 19,000) were also affected. The vulnerability exploited by Chinese hackers was CVE-2017-5638, and the hackers were able to remain undetected in Equifax systems for approximately 134 days.

Equifax primarily sells consumer credit and insurance reports, as well as related analytics, to businesses across a variety of industries. Retailers, insurance companies, healthcare providers, utilities, government agencies, as well as banks, credit unions, personal and specialty finance companies, and other financial institutions, are among the business customers. Equifax sells credit reports, analytics, demographic data, and software to businesses. Credit reports contain detailed information on an individual's personal credit and payment history, indicating how they have met financial obligations such as paying bills or repaying a loan. Credit grantors use this information to determine what products or services to offer their customers and under what conditions. Equifax also offers commercial credit reports with financial and non-financial information on businesses of all sizes. Equifax gathers and distributes data via the National Consumer Telecom and Utilities Exchange (NCTUE), a non-credit data exchange that includes consumer payment history on telecommunications and utility accounts.

Equifax began offering credit consumer services, such as credit fraud and identity theft prevention products, in 1999. Equifax and other credit monitoring companies are required by law to provide one free credit file disclosure to US residents every 12 months; the Annualcreditreport.com website incorporates data from Equifax credit records in the United States. Equifax also provides device fingerprinting-based fraud prevention products such as "FraudIQ Authenticate Device."

Get together the following account information:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Social Insurance Number
• Date Of Birth
• Address 1
• Address 2
• City
• State/Province/Region
• ZIP/Postal Code
• Country
• E-mail Address on account
• Password

Follow these steps:

1. Pick up your phone and call 1-866-640-2273
2. Tell the representative that you'd like to cancel
3. Help the representative locate your account by providing the info they ask for
4. If applicable, ask for a refund
5. Ask the representative for a receipt, email, or confirmation number
6. It's important to keep the info about your cancellation, just in case!

Follow these steps:

1. Head over to https://www.consumer.equifax.ca/personal/
2. Continue by clicking on "Customer Log In"
3. Login with your email address and password
4. Continue by clicking on "My account"
5. Scrolling down, find "Manage Billing"
6. Continue by clicking on "Manage Billing"
7. Scrolling down, find "Cancel Membership"
8. Continue by clicking on "Cancel Membership"
9. Put your info in the places provided
10. It's important to keep the info about your cancellation, just in case!