The majority of Americans have a credit file with each of the the three major credit reporting agencies, Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. These credit bureaus compile personal information such as name(s), Social Security number, addresses, phone numbers, credit card accounts, mortgages, auto and student loans and other info.  The Experian credit bureau was the victim of a hacking again in 2015.

We all assume our information is safe and there are great security measures taken to protect it, but are we all open to Identity Theft and Credit Card Fraud?

This was met with harsh criticism throughout social media once it was discovered Experian was offering its own monitoring services to those that were affected by their mistakes.T-Mobile CEO John Legere was vocal on social media, expressing his attempt to find a more solid solution to this crisis.

However, Experian has gone on to say that this incident was “isolated” and that they can still be trusted with credit monitoring.

“This was an isolated incident of one server and one client’s data. The consumer credit bureau was not accessed in this incident and no other clients’ data was involved.”

This statement is contradictory to the breach history Experian has had in the past. There has, in fact, been a pattern of breaches at Experian, as well as several competitors such as TransUnion and Equifax, have had multiple hacking occurrences in the past several years.

Both in 2012 and 2013, Experian reported breaches in their servers to authorities that were shown to have occurred multiple times. In the 2013 incident, Experian also attempted to clean their mess by offering their credit monitoring services to the New Hampshire residents affected, much like their most recent incident.

As shown throughout social media, several of those affected have been vocal of their displeasure with Experian and are hopeful there will be a more plausible solution in the coming weeks.