As I often say, things aren’t as bad as you think – they are far worse.  It is not bad enough that 143 million Americans are at heightened danger of identity theft due to the massive data breach at credit reporting agency, Equifax, but now scammers are seeing the concern of people about the data breach as an opportunity to scam them out of their money.
Scammers are contacting people by phone, email and text messages posing as Equifax claiming that they are there to help the victims of the data breach, when the truth is that the scammers merely want to lure you into providing personal information and use it to make you a victim of identity theft.   You can’t trust your Caller ID because through a technique called “spoofing” it can be manipulated to make a call from a scammer appear to be coming from Equifax.
TIPS
It is a good rule to never provide personal information of any kind to someone who calls you on the phone.  If the call appears legitimate, call the person, company or agency back at a telephone number that you know is accurate.
The same rule applies to emails and text messages you receive.  Never provide personal information until you have confirmed that the communication is legitimate.
In this case, Equifax is not contacting victims by email, phone or text messages asking for personal information or credit card information.