It has been revealed that secret salary records of more than one-third of Americans have been shared by their employers with the credit rating agency Equifax.


Described as one of the biggest privacy breaches of the modern age by The Daily Mail, 190 million employment and salary records have been sold to debt collectors and financial service companies through an Equifax-owned subsidiary called The Work Number.

Originally created as a fast and easy way to check the employment history of new staff, it has been revealed that The Work Number's database is so detailed it contains week-by-week paycheck information dating back years for tens of millions of people.

Worryingly, The Work Number also stores other sensitive information about American citizens such as their health care provider, if they have dental insurance and if they've ever filed an unemployment claim.

'It's the biggest privacy breach in our time, and it’s legal and no one knows it’s going on,' said Robert Mather, who operates an employment background company named Pre-Employ.com. 'It's like a secret CIA.'

In 2009, Equifax said the data covered 30 percent of the U.S. working population, and it now says The Work Number is adding 12 million records annually.