Skip to main content

Equifax reopens salary search site, security expert says it’s still vulnerable

cfpb investigation equifax hack headquarters
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
A salary lookup service provided by recently compromised credit bureau Equifax came back online after it was taken down for “security enhancements” on October 8. The service allows anyone to look up your salary and employment history going back at least 10 years by providing a few pieces of personal information: Your Social Security number and your date of birth.

It’s designed to provide income verification to employers, banks, and other “credentialed verifiers” but after the Equifax hack, the sensitive information you need to access someone’s even more sensitive information was out there, ripe for the taking. When security expert Brian Krebs brought attention to the issue in a post on his blog, Equifax took the site down.

Recommended Videos

Now, however, the website is back up and despite Equifax’s claims to the contrary, the security enhancements the company made to the Work Number, haven’t exactly enhanced security all that much.

“The only ‘security enhancements’ I saw that my source encountered was a prompt to enter his full name, date of birth, Social Security number, address, phone number and email, followed by the usual retinue of four multiple-guess ‘knowledge-based authentication’ (KBA) questions. I’ve long been a critic of these KBA questions, because the answers usually are available using sites like Zillow and Spokeo, to say nothing of social networking profiles,” Krebs wrote.

So, in short, you can still access someone’s income and employment history with readily available information — and a handful of less readily available information, illicitly procured from the dark corners of the internet. Krebs goes on to describe how even a credit freeze — the recommended course of action after your information has been compromised — won’t protect you entirely.

Those knowledge-based authentication questions, generated from your credit and income history, will still pop up when attempting to access your income history through the Work Number, but the questions won’t use financial information — they will be generated from other bits of information Equifax has about you, like your address history, and the names of lenders you’ve used in the past.

“What’s interesting is that these types of questions tend to be easier to answer than, say, ‘What was the amount of your most recent car loan payment?’” Krebs continues, describing how a credit freeze just might make it easier for identity thieves to access the sensitive personal information contained on the Work Number.

The best defense, Krebs says, is to sign into the Work Number yourself, set up a secure PIN, and add at least a half dozen security questions and answers to your account. The questions, he advises, should have answers only you would know that cannot be found via social media.

Jayce Wagner
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A staff writer for the Computing section, Jayce covers a little bit of everything -- hardware, gaming, and occasionally VR.
The performance downgrade made to the M4 Pro that no one is talking about
Someone using a MacBook Pro M4.

I've spent this whole week testing the new M4 chip, specifically the M4 Pro in both the Mac mini and 16-inch MacBook Pro. They are fantastic, impressive chips, but in my testing, I noticed something pretty surprising about the way they run that I haven't seen others talk much about. I'm talking about the pretty significant change Apple made in this generation to power modes.

First off, Apple has extended the different power modes to the "Pro" level chips for the first time, having kept it as an exclusive for Max in the past. The three power modes, found in System Settings, are the following: Low Power, Automatic, and High Power. The interesting thing, however, is that in my testing, the Low Power drops performance far more this time around.

Read more
Fortnite PC performance: best settings, fps boost, and more
Fortnite man.

Chapter 2 Remix of Fortnite is in full swing, and as you're exploring everything that's new, there's no better time to refresh yourself on the best settings to use for your PC. After all, with higher frame rates come better reaction times for you, giving you a chance of getting that shot off before your opponent, which can sometimes make all the difference.

Fortnite is a slightly more demanding esport than some of its older rivals, but that just means there's more scope for performance improvements if you select the right settings. Here are the most important performance-enhancing tweaks you can make to Fortnite.
The best settings for Fortnite

Read more
Teardown of the M4 Mac mini reveals a huge surprise
The Mac mini up on its side on a desk.

Thanks to a video posted on social media showing the inside of the new Mac mini, we now know it has modular storage and the 256GB base model uses two 128GB chips. This is good news for tech enthusiasts who were disappointed with the M2 Mac mini's single 256GB chip since it caused slower SSD speeds.

Two chips allows for parallel reading and writing so jobs can get done faster, but it's important to note that the difference isn't noticeable for most day-to-day tasks. The problem only applied to 256GB models and was primarily a pain point for enthusiasts -- but it's still nice to know that Apple is willing to listen to customers sometimes (not always, though).

Read more