With over 14,000 employees worldwide, Equifax has nearly US$5 billion in annual revenue and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol EFX.

[citation needed] The company also had a division selling specialist credit information to the insurance industry but spun off this service, including the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) database as ChoicePoint in 1997.

[17] In October 2010, Equifax announced it was acquiring Anakam, an identity verification software company headquartered in San Diego, California, which invented and pioneered SMS (text-message based) two-factor authentication.

[18] In February 2016, Equifax acquired the Australasian company Veda, the largest credit reference agency in Australia at the time.

[24] In March 2018, the Security and Exchange Commission accused Jun Ying, Equifax's former CIO, of illicit insider trading, by selling company stock before the breach was publicly disclosed.

[25] After an investigation by the FBI, Ying pleaded guilty, was sentenced to four months of prison plus a year of supervised release, and was fined $55,000.00 and ordered to pay restitution of $117,117.61 in June 2019.

[26][27] An Equifax manager, Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu, also pleaded guilty to insider trading and received a sentence of 8 months of home confinement.

[28][29] In July 2019, The New York Times, the New York Post and other media reported Equifax had agreed to pay approximately $650 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to resolve investigations by several state attorneys general, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the FTC, and a consumer class-action lawsuit related to the data breach.

[30][31][32] By September 2019, however, Equifax had added qualifications and "hurdles" to its claims process which put in doubt whether the previously announced cash settlement of $125 per affected consumer would actually be awarded.

[36] In July 2020, Equifax reported that, after purchasing Ansonia Credit Data (Ansonia), a major source of consumer credit, payments, and invoice receivables (AR) data used by financial companies and other borrowers and businesses in the shipping and logistics sectors, the firm has expanded its position in commercial payment technology solutions.

[40][41] In February 2023, it was announced Equifax had acquired the Barueri-headquartered credit bureau, Boa Vista Serviços for $596 million,[42] starting to trade on the B3 in São Paulo, under the symbol EFXB31.

Equifax primarily operates in the business-to-business sector, selling consumer credit and insurance reports and related analytics to businesses in a range of industries.

[citation needed] Business customers include retailers, insurance firms, healthcare providers, utilities, government agencies, as well as banks, credit unions, personal and specialty finance companies and other financial institutions.

There is intrinsic vulnerability in collecting and storing personal financial information, and we need to have a meaningful discussion on how to protect and limit access to it.

According to the reporting, despite receiving this warning from the security researcher, the affected portal was not closed until six months later in June, well after the March and May–July breaches had begun.

[49] Between May and July 2017, currently unidentified hackers were able to use a known exploit on one of Equifax' web servers that had yet to be updated to access the credit records of more than 140 million Americans as well as some British and Canadian citizens before the breach was detected and shut down.

[53][54] In September 2017, Brian Krebs revealed that the Argentine arm of Equifax had left private data from approximately 14,000 consumers, and more than 100 staff members, available to anyone who entered "admin" as both the username and password for one of its online systems.

[57] While these apps themselves were not reportedly connected to that breach, they had security flaws of their own, being vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks owing to some parts using HTTP instead of HTTPS.

[62][63][64][65] At that time, only 3 out of 65 top anti-malware products provided protection against the particular malware, meaning that many visitors were at risk of having their computers infected when visiting the Equifax website.

[70] The company has been fined by the Federal Trade Commission on two occasions for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA").

[73] In her lawsuit, Miller alleged Equifax had merged her credit reports with another person with a different Social Security number, date of birth, and address.

"[73][79] In April 2014, Equifax was sued in New York federal court by God Gazarov, who claimed the company erroneously reports him as having no credit history because of his unusual first name.

[82] On November 4, 2017, it was reported that a group of five Oklahomans had sued the company, claiming that Equifax "violated laws which require financial institutions to protect the security of their customers' personal information.

[85] Equifax software engineer Sudhakar Reddy was charged with insider trading for purchasing options prior to the disclosure of the 2017 data breach.

[86][87] In January 2020, Equifax agreed to a global settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 50 U.S. states and territories.