Protect your credit

Data breaches like the one reported by credit-reporting company Equifax are a great calamity of modern life. The ancient Egyptians had swarms of locusts; we have plagues of identity thieves and computer hackers. Nowadays we aren’t totally at the whim of nature or some capricious higher power, but we do have to actively protect our own interests.

In the case of Equifax, the breach lasted from mid-May through July. The hackers accessed people’s names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. They also stole credit card numbers for about 209,000 people and dispute documents with personal identifying information for about 182,000 people, according to the Federal Trade Commission. You can visit www.equifaxsecurity2017.com for more information and to perform a basic check on whether your data is known to have been compromised. Also see tinyurl.com/FTC-Equifax-FAQ.