A Symbolic Look at Equifax

Here’s a video that symbolizes my interactions when enrolling in Equifax's credit monitoring service (audio is a must with this video). Nothing like a happy-go-lucky bear caught in a bear trap. 

Details

1. I checked to see if my data was compromised. (Some people reported yes, some reported “We believe that your personal information was not impacted by this incident.”) Fortunately, mine was the latter: https://www.equifaxsecurity2017.com/potential-impact/

2. I clicked “Enroll,” and I provided my information. Then, I waited several days for a confirmation e-mail for the next step. (http://trustedidpremier.com)

3. I clicked on the link in the confirmation e-mail. I provided a little more info and got redirected to a web page asking for me to login, but I never set up a password. (https://www.trustedid.com/premier/myaccount.php) 

4. I clicked “Forgot password” and received a reset-password e-mail to set up my first time password.

5. I set up a new password and clicked login after confirming my info.

6. I repeatedly received a “Server is down” error message.

7. I waited (hours/days) and kept trying while continuously receiving “The server unexpectedly dropped the connection” error messages.

To be fair to Equifax, it’s virtually impossible to standup a website in a matter of days/weeks that could handle a load of this magnitude. (Remember when Twitter used to go down – “Fail Whale” – in the early years? Facebook avoided this problem by managing their rollout over college campuses to control their growth and server load.)

In the Equifax case, server downtime works in their favor since less people will enroll. And it gets very confusing for consumers when dealing with so many different domain names (equifax.com, equifaxsecurity2017.com, trustedidpremier.com, trustedid.com, etc).

I’ll report back when I’m able to successfully enroll. I'm still getting a "server is busy" error message.

Anyone else have luck enrolling?