Equifax: Lesser impact from breach to UK residents

NEW YORK (AP) - Equifax says the potential impact of its massive data breach on U.K. residents is less severe than in the U.S., where 143 million Americans had their data exposed.

The credit company said Friday that its U.K. systems were not affected by the breach. However, there was a batch of fewer than 400,000 British consumers who had some of their personal information compromised. But the company said that information was more limited than what the hackers found for American consumers, and was unlikely to lead to identity theft.

Equifax offer identity protection services to those British consumers, similar to the program it's offering to Americans.

The company has traced the theft of information to a software flaw that could have been fixed well beforehand.