Who is Equifax?
Equifax is an incredibly large consumer credit reporting agency. They collect and handle sensitive information on almost a billion consumers and almost a hundred million businesses worldwide. As you can imagine, the safety of their information is incredibly important. Just recently, Equifax was the subject of a large security breach which led the hackers accessing approximately 145 million Equifax consumers’ personal information. This included full names, dates of birth, addresses and even Social Security numbers.
What is Malware?
Malware, or malicious software, is any program or file that is harmful to your computer or sensitive information. Malware includes worms, viruses, spyware and trojan horses. These programs can serve a variety of functions, such as stealing, deleting or encrypting sensitive data, hijacking or altering important computing functions and monitoring everything a user does on their computer. It can also spread to other computers on the network, without anyone noticing it until it’s too late.
Malware typically gets into your computer from internet use or email, though it can also be downloaded from websites, games, music, toolbars, software or literally any other download.
Everything you download is a risk. You never know what is and isn’t infected, and not every anti-virus software will protect you from every threat, so it’s very important you know the warning signs of infection, and what to watch out for before you download.