The Work Number

October 8, 2017

Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

This post was originally published on this siteIn May, KrebsOnSecurity broke a story about lax security at a payroll division of big-three credit bureau Equifax that let identity thieves access personal and financial data on an unknown number of Americans. Incredibly, this same division makes it simple to access detailed salary and employment history on a large portion of Americans using little more than someone’s Social Security number and date of birth — both data elements that were stolen in the recent breach at Equifax. At issue is a service provided by Equifax’s TALX division called The Work Number. The […]
November 2, 2017

Equifax Reopens Salary Lookup Service

This post was originally published on this siteEquifax has re-opened a Web site that lets anyone look up the salary history of a large portion of the American workforce using little more than a person’s Social Security number and their date of birth. The big-three credit bureau took the site down just hours after I wrote about it on Oct. 8, and began restoring the site eight days later saying it had added unspecified “security enhancements.” The Work Number, Equifax’s salary and employment history portal. At issue is a service provided by Equifax’s TALX division called The Work Number. The service is designed […]
November 13, 2017

How to Opt Out of Equifax Revealing Your Salary History

This post was originally published on this siteA KrebsOnSecurity series on how easy big-three credit bureau Equifax makes it to get detailed salary history data on tens of millions of Americans apparently inspired a deeper dive on the subject by Fast Company, which examined how this Equifax division has been one of the company’s best investments. In this post, I’ll show you how to opt out of yet another Equifax service that makes money at the expense of your privacy. My original report showed how the salary history for tens of millions of employees at some of the world’s largest […]
May 10, 2021

Fintech Startup Offers $500 for Payroll Passwords

This post was originally published on this siteHow much is your payroll data worth? Probably a lot more than you think. One financial startup that’s targeting the gig worker market is offering up to $500 to anyone willing to hand over the payroll account username and password given to them by their employer, plus a regular payment for each month afterwards in which those credentials still work. This ad, from workplaceunited[.]com, promised up to $500 for people who provided their payroll passwords, plus $25 a month for each month those credentials kept working. New York-based Argyle.com says it’s building a […]