The guy needs to be fired and the company needs to be restrained, ASAP. Simple as that!
1
No deferred prosecution agreements. You know: acknowledge criminal actions, pay fine, sign agreement not to do it again. This provides zero deterrence, since the stockholders pay the bill and the executives keep their money.
We need deterrence. We need the people who made the decisions to pay personal fines, and in the case of criminal activity, to spend time in prison.
If not, this kind of thing is a logical business model for those making the decisions.
7
Perhaps the penalty should be to deliberately release the data of the employees of Equifax. I would bet that their employees are better-protected from identity theft than anyone else - just like in the health care industry employee records are kept in separate databases, and the records of government employees aren't available in India.
3
This is what I could never understand. Why is it that private companies can "own" us (ie. our details) without our consent and without ever a chance for us to opt-out, and why is it the norm in US?
9
They can do this because the people who make the decisions are never held individually responsible. They get reward with no risk.
5
It's much more profitable to be unaccountable.
You can increase your profits in two ways: charge more and/or minimize your costs.
The headline reads: "As Equifax Amassed Ever More Data, Safety Was a Sales Pitch." Advertising protection of consumer data tends to increase sales; saving costs on protection of consumer data actually increases profits.
6
The fourth credit bureau [I don't know if there are more than 4], Innovis, should also be added to annualcreditreport.com.
See innovis.com
4
Why do we need a strong federal gov't? Trump has made no substantial move to protect us from Russian electoral hacking, Russian empire-expansion, WikiLeaks propaganda, out-of-control police forces, neo-Nazis, and climate change. When he does act, he over-reacts, as in his geopolitical strategy of mutually insulting NK's Krazy Kim. And where is our government as Equifax and other corporate giants take our most sensitive personal info. without our permission, sells it to the highest bidder, then loses 143M to hackers who could ruin all of our finances, scores and reputations. Then the company tries to make us pay for its own mistakes and greed. Too bad the Trump creed IS greed!
5
All the finger pointing involving Equifax is meaningless because the media ignores the fact that the breach problem is of a far wider scope than anyone could have imagined a couple years ago. Note the date of the recent discovery of flaws in the Apache Struts software.
https://lgtm.com/blog/apache_struts_CVE-2017-9805_announcement
And the New York Post gets it right while the NYT just piles on more nonsense.
NYP-9-19-17
There are 50,000 potential Equifaxes looming on the horizon.
“Corporate America has been slow to update its open-source software, even in the wake of the Equifax hack that exposed 143 million people’s sensitive data, according to one of the central hubs for the free programs.
More than 50,000 organizations are using outdated and leaky versions of Apache, the software whose Struts app gave hackers a back door into Equifax — even though free fixes have been available for nine months, according to Sonatype, a firm that monitors downloads of open-source software like Apache.”
2
Is anyone watching to see where Equifax's campaign contributions are going? What you bet that they are increasing how much they are giving and giving to more politicians than before the breach?
8
Has anyone gotten in touch with their Senator about some regulation for this invasive Industry?
And who did hack and steal all this info? I haven't heard from anyone about that investigation.
8
Immediately after the Equifax breach, I applied to all three companies for a "freeze" on my credit reporting. I was told it had happened, and all this was on the phone.
Then, I got a form from Experian telling me that I had succeeded in putting a five-year stop to "pre-approved"credit invitations, and when I tried to talk to them again to find out just what had actually happened, it was impossible to get to a human.
Eventually, they hung up on me, after I kept saying "representative" to the machine answering calls.
This all reminds me of pharmaceutical companies which have made huge amounts of money on someone's cell lines, never paid them anything for the use of them, pretended this was "business as usual," and that they didn't owe anything, either. The credit rating companies need to be brought to heel.
13
Equifax's statements may sound positive, but I wonder if my experience trying to establish an account on their "trusted ID" site is typical. I tried to set up an account for a fraud alert and credit freeze, but their system never showed that I had completed the process on line. I was stuck with a spinning circle symbol for over an hour when I finally quit my browser on Friday. On Saturday morning I received an automated email telling me my account was active, but I couldn't open it with my ID and password. After numerous attempts and trying to use their "change password" window, I called their customer service number. I was on hold for two hours before having to leave home. Yes, I do have a life to live. When I returned home I left an email message stating my travails. This morning I received an automated message giving me a case #. Thanks Equifax for nothing if I can't get personal help on line or by phone.
I went to Experian, established an account and set up a fraud alert in about 15 minutes.
8
Someone bring the Equifax executives out from under the rocks and put them before cameras.
13
Equifax AND Experian and Transunion have long since crossed the line from providing only "accurate" credit information on Americans to corporate America. Read this entire article and educate yourself. Equifax is in the business of gathering every single piece of information about YOU WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION, and then selling it to anyone and everyone who wants to pay for it FOR WHATEVER REASONS, granting you credit is only one reason. Now, Equifax provides "buyers" with your salary among many other things you probably aren't even aware of. This IS BIG BROTHER. The same greed that drove Wells Fargo drives Equifax. Investigate the INSIDER TRADING, throw the three Equifax bums in jail, and then Congress MUST regulate these three companies. Nationalize them immediately. The only thing they should be selling to corporate customers is your ability to pay your bills! Not what what baseball team you root for. Enough is enough!!
26
I agree...but we all know the GOP all never vote to regulate this business
3
I was registering for an online medical records site the other day, and the site bounced my password twice as not being secure enough. What a joke! What difference does all this cloak-and-dagger password silliness matter, when Equifax treats our most essential information so carelessly?!
9
Received an email yesterday from Equifax: "To verify your identity and activate your product, please click the link below". I clicked. Five minutes later, it was still "loading". There has been no change in their help-line hours...apparently this is not important enough to them to put on extra service staff. I had already been unable to obtain my "annual credit report" via email, without explanation. And it will be a minimum of three to five weeks before I can get it by mail. Apparently, they can't even afford extra printers.
7
Security is expensive - sometimes in geometric progression. The more secure you want to make your system, the more you are going to spend. So, every company makes a cost/benefit judgement on just how much security they are willing to pay for. When Anthem (parent of BC/BS) took a major hit a couple of years ago, it turned out that it dedicated 10% of their IT budget to securing its own internal data & money, but only 1% of the budget to secure the data of its customers. When the cost of securing your system eats too deeply into the profits you make selling widgets or whatever, decisions about relative risks are made. You can trust a doorknob pin/tumbler lock that can easily be picked by anyone with a week's training or equip a doorwith three tubular bolt locks & an electronic keypad. Both are ultimately defeatable, but the latter requires exotic skills that few possess, while the former is really only the illusion of protection.
Most companies are too protective of their bottom lines to hire the sufficiently skilled developers & security experts or put into place the sufficiently strong series of firewalls & internal protections. Even then, they need strong protections against social engineering (phishing) attacks or thefts by their own employees. Even isolated computers can be compromised by simply plugging a tiny USB nub which is a separate wifi router into the back of the machine where nobody will notice & accessing it through your laptop.
5
I remember a NPR story about a woman who just last year sued a major automobile manufacturer in small claims court for 8 or 10 thousand dollars and won. It only costs a 60.00 flat fee in my state to go to small claims court and corporations do not want to bother to send their lawyers to every little county in the country to defend themselves. Thus, the plaintiff wins by default. Maybe each of us, in every state should sue them in small claims for a paltry $5000.00 and bankrupt them.
11
The site for free annual credit reports, annualcreditreport.com, should include a way to freeze your reports for free and way to opt-out of data collection by the credit bureaus. Laws, not just regulations, should be passed that turn over the ownership of personal data to each person modeled, perhaps on the health records privacy laws.
The credit bureaus, if allowed to continue to exist, should have to lease the use of our data.
6
Equifax should bare ALL the costs of the damage it has done.
This statement is absurd: "Equifax said it was supporting customers who may have been affected by the data breach."
I was never an Equifax customer -- however they compromised my personal information.
The solution here is that individuals should be able to demand, for free, that these companies collect no data and keep no files about them.
And also credit freezes should be free.
8
We Americans don't own our own personal data. Privacy protections in Europe are much stronger, and US corporations live with those restrictions when operating in the EU. But in the good ol' USA, the legalized bribery we quaintly refer to as "campaign finance" allows our putative representatives to respond instead to the needs of funders. See yesterday's article about angry republican "donors" upset about the failure to rip health care from 30 million Americans so that they could enjoy a tax cut. The system has been so utterly corrupted that it's getting hard to imagine repairing it. Jefferson would be appalled.
12
A commenter said of such companies, "They have $; we don't." This may seem clear, but it's incorrect.
Yes, they can control lots of cash. Yes, they can apparently buy many public servants, all too easily. But if we show them even a noticeable drop in demand for houses, cars, and other major goods ... if we even give them an impression that worse sales drops are in the wings ... they will panic, and fold like a cheap suit. The only producers that will feel secure will be Hanes and Fruit of the Loom, as demand for clean underwear will rise.
4
There is one thing we all can do while not holding our breaths waiting for government action: we can stop pretending anything on the internet is or can be private or safe, and then acting accordingly. We can stop pretending every new gadget represents progress. The F.D.A. recently had a recall because even cardiac pacemakers can be hacked. Think what will happen if drones and self-driving cars are turned loose.
Equifax is no different from Wells Fargo, Facebook, Bank of America, Google, or any other large corporation. They have no allegiance to America, its values, or its people. Their allegiance is solely to profit, a small portion of which goes to hire marketing firms, lobbyists, lawyers, and spin doctors to pretend their motives are noble.
However, the important thing to remember is that corporations do not make decisions; people do. Unless and until those people at the top are held accountable, with criminal trials and serious jail time when appropriate, nothing will change, fines and such simply written off as the cost of doing business.
Equifax is not the problem; it is merely the surface manifestation of a fundamental disease.
21
Equifax hired a music major to head the cybersecurity for the company. That should tell us all we need to know about this worthless company. Time for a class action lawsuit of all customers who personal data was lost.
14
Can you say Wells Fargo! The entire BOD and Sr. Leadership should have their bonuses clawed back from last five years. An independent investigation by Congress should drag these imbeciles in front of cameras to explain how you "fail" to do the one thing you advertise.....Protect Your Clients.
17
An openly aired Congressional investigation involves some wrist slapping, terse tongue lashing, occasional eye ball rolls and tsk tsk'ing. Then it's time for martini lunch for all! Back to business as usual.
7
This level of ineptitude should lead to Equifax going out of business.
19
This is the 21st century. Relying on SSN and birth date etc. to ascertain ones identity is TOTALLY obsolete. We need a digitally encrypted universal ID!!!!!
6
Using a universal ID opens a Pandora's box of oppression. Better to have separate numbers for different functions such as driving, voting, banking, etc.
2
A public flogging of top Equifax officers would not be amiss at this point.
11
J-A-I-L-T-I-M-E.
9
It's not only Equifax, but the way that information is misused. I got an invitation by SoFi to see if they could offer a better deal on a student loan. I submitted the inquiry and got a letter back that reported my application (!) was rejected because I didn't have a co-signer. I'm 70 years old.
The reason they cited was my credit score (range 350 to 850): 847.
All the data in the world won't fix stupid.
12
Lock the execs up!
9
Where is the outcry from Congress over this? Oh yeah, I forgot. All their big donors have black American Express cards and don't give a hoot about "credit reporting". Bashing Obamacare is far more important to them.
12
This country badly needs new legislation protecting people’s right to privacy, and the guiding principle should be a requirement for “opting-in.” Financial institutions should not be able to send our financial information to third parties (like Equifax) without our explicit permission, social media should not be able to market every detail of our personal lives without permission, etc. We already protect health data, it’s time to extend this protection.
Consider the NY Times privacy policy:
“In the future, we may sell, buy, merge or partner with other companies or businesses. In such transactions, we may include your information among the transferred assets.”
The Times monitors every article we read on the paper’s web site, and every link we click. The newspaper reserves the right to do just about anything they want with the identifiable personal data they collect, in a manner that’s opaque. Importantly, there’s no way for readers to opt out.
Subscribing to the Times is voluntary, but the paper should be required to use an “opt-in” approach. Readers of the Times are free to cancel subscriptions, of course. In which case, the Times promises to destroy our data. Perhaps. The Times policy states “As a matter of course, we will delete personally identifiable information associated with accounts that have been inactive for at least 15 years.” Wonderful.
Here’s hoping for much needed legislation, and that the NY Times would itself practice what this article preaches.
12
Infuriating. Unlike Ms Papenfuhs, I know a way to just stop: sue or preferably legislate all 3 out of business. It's unconscionable that these incompetent leeches use our personal data for financial gain with no recourse for consumers to opt out. A nationalized system now.
9
Equifax is graciously offering free credit monitoring services for one year. Oh, that makes me feel so safe and secure that my identity will not be compromised. Ever, due to this breach. Hey Equifax, how about till death do us part????
5
I hope some day soon these idiotic institutions and credit rating will be made obsolete by cryptocurrency and blockchain. How is it possible that we let this happen in the "land of the free".
4
Tell you what...ANYONE attempting to buy a car, a house, get a job, rent an apartment, whatever be the case, better have their own documentation as proof of good credit. WHAT CAN WE ALL DO? If it isn't bad enough that half of the US population has been hacked, now we face our credit being ruined??? What are you gonna do CONGRESS????? I am not freezing my three credit accounts.
This country is in an unbelievable state of chaos.
8
What a huge debacle! What do we do when our most intimate information about ourselves has been released to the world? Easy: force our lax government to allow those 145 millions Americans to simply change their social security numbers. Then, the old dates of birth, etc would not match the new number and it defeats much of the breach. Problem solved. So why isn't this being done or even considered? Otherwise its a life-long problem for those of us who were breached.
6
How is it possible that executives just happened to sell $1.8 million of stock after the breach but before it was announced? This sounds like fraud. I hope the U.S. Attorney is investigating this potential crime. If these execs had prior knowledge, then they should be sent to jail. Bad enough that this breach occurred, but capitalizing on crime is absolutely unacceptable.
6
While I'm glad the nytimes is shining a light on this problem, the continued use of the word "customer" to describe unwilling victims is terrible.
6
Why can't Equifax be a major issue in the 2018 elections?
8
I think it is terrible, and Equifax is a terrible company. I have felt fearful and anxious about credit and credit ratings before and kept silent. All three of these agencies have too much power, too little oversight, and no controls. People, citizens, taxpayers have not been silent, as this article states. People are angry, I am angry, I hope all three credit agencies find better ways to do their business. I wish there was another way.
3
I bet the reason the politicians are remaining silent on this egregious breach is because Equifax is probably paying all of them off.
6
One thing I learned living in Atlanta was not to trust any business that was headquartered there. It's the kind of place where entrepreneurship mostly means grift---people working on the cheap looking for suckers with slick appeals. That seems to capture Equifax in this article. Credit reporting needs to be taken into the public sector--there are still risks, but it seems surprisingly easier to get rid of federal managers than to get rid of the rot at places like Equifax.
2
I saw a mistake on my credit report about 20 years ago and immediately froze my reports. It was free then. I've also encouraged all of my tax clients to put a freeze on.
It's kind of inconvenient when you need to life the freeze for credit, but I really believe that freeze has saved my skin numerous times.
Another really smart thing to do is stop credit card offers by going to www.optoutprescreen.com. I've stopped all credit card offers forever.
8
As angry as we might be, chances are that nothing is gonna change for years. While complaint and give suggestions, I bet you that those credit rating agencies are lobbying the Trump administration and Congress to loosen up regulations and continue business as usual for them or better.
They have $, we don't. So, they get their way. We don't.
Have you heard President Trump address his outrage on Twitter? No. He's too busy criticizing athletes while N. Korea is getting ready to sends us a gift and all those hackers continue to rob Americans. These hacking thing reminds me of the Vikings robbing the Europeans in the Middle Ages. We have all these personal data and credit to protect, but that people who are in charge of it are hoping that divine intervention will take care of it.
4
Just a thought, but would it be to hard to just ask the consumer if they want "their" information shared with Equifax along with Transunion and Experian? A simple "click of the mouse" could solve a lot of problems and give us the consumer some piece of mind, knowing that our personal info will not be going to those incompetent greedy fools at Equifax.
4
Equifax deserves some sympathy. It's virtually impossible to keep out the legions of hackers, crackers, government spies and crooks from hacking them given the complex array of flawed software used in today's systems.
Getting hacked is not a question of if, it’s when. It has happened to big and small companies, your desktops, political parties and governments. Equifax isn't unique and it will happen again to them or another bureau.
That’s why it's time to change the way the credit data is protected.
Our name, birthday, social security number, former addresses, loans, etc, are not going to change forever or at least years and can be used by bad actors to literally mint money at our expense. It’s not like I can cancel my life and get another identity.
The obvious answer would be to lock all credit reports from access without the person’s limited permission. Verify it with a secure PIN that could be changed like any other if needed and make it apply to all credit bureaus.
By having reports locked by default, the data becomes less valuable.
There are other solutions for sure that could protect the data so locking isn't the only option.
If you are a credit bureau, you have to take full responsibility for loss of credit data collectively. Wouldn’t it be smarter for you to get together as an industry and fix the problem for consumers... and yourself?
God knows Congress won't fix anything other than getting reelected.
2
From what I read in the IT trade journals, the breached was caused because they neglected to apply patches to their software for several months. This is classic unforced error. It is criminal fraud and should be prosecuted in civil and criminal suits as such.
5
Like the Wall Street meltdown in 2008, where are the criminal charges? Didn't these people at Equifax sit on this information for months?
4
This is what happens when private interests gather too much power.
5
They already have.
1
Equifax is no different from Wells Fargo, Facebook, Bank of America, Google, or any other large corporation. They have no allegiance to America, its values, or its people. Their allegiance is solely to profit, a small portion of which goes to hire marketing firms, lobbyists, lawyers, and spin doctors to pretend their motives are noble.
However, the important thing to remember is that corporations do not make decisions; people do. Unless and until those people at the top are held accountable, with criminal trials and serious jail time when appropriate, nothing will change, fines and such simply written off as the cost of doing business.
There is one thing we all can do while not holding our breaths waiting for government action: we can stop pretending anything on the internet is or can be private or safe, and then acting accordingly. We can stop pretending every new gadget represents progress. The F.D.A. recently had a recall because even cardiac pacemakers can be hacked. Think what will happen if drones and self-driving cars are turned loose.
Equifax is not the problem; it is merely the surface manifestation of a fundamental disease.
2
Hey, focus on the leadership (or lack thereof) for the lack of transparency and accountability and I mean the board of directors in particular. There is an executive committee chair and a governance committee chair. They are handsomely paid, as is the staff leadership team. Let's see a huge shake up!
1
Actually. this sort of thing has been going on for at least a century. I once got my hands on an old journal that was found in the attic of a brewery owner. It was from the late 19th century and contained information on hundreds of tavern owners. Did they drink to excess? Were they married? Did they go to church? What assets did they have? Were they adulterers? Plus a whole bunch more. The apparent aim was to help determine whether beer could be supplied on credit.
So, really, this scrubbing of social media sites and other gathering of information is as old as capitalism itself. It has merely changed form.
And in comparison, the justice system incarcerates low-income individuals for possession of even a small amount of narcotics. Our society belongs in a Lewis Carroll novel—if one is rich, educated, and, white, the sentence for a crime that can complicate or even destroy the financial well-being and peace of mind of millions is a year at Club Fed.
3
Equifax is no different from Wells Fargo, Facebook, Bank of America, Google, or any other large corporation. They have no allegiance to America, its values, or its people. Their allegiance is solely to profit, a small portion of which goes to hire marketing firms, lobbyists, lawyers, and spin doctors to pretend their motives are noble.
However, the important thing to remember is that corporations do not make decisions; people do. Unless and until those people at the top are held accountable, with criminal trials and serious jail time when appropriate, nothing will change, fines and such simply written off as the cost of doing business.
There is one thing we all can do while not holding our breaths waiting for government action: we can stop pretending anything on the internet is or can be private or safe, and then acting accordingly. We can stop pretending every new gadget represents progress. The F.D.A. recently had a recall because even cardiac pacemakers can be hacked. Think what will happen if drones and self-driving cars are turned loose.
Equifax is not the problem; it is merely the surface manifestation of a fundamental disease.
1
Equifax needs to provide a simple way to file a credit freeze via the Web. The other two do this. Equifax only offers "fraud alert" online. If Equifax cannot do this then the gov't owes the voters to shut it down. It is very nearly impossible to freeze your credit w/Equifax (I'm assuming some people have done it), so far I only get phone numbers for customer service representatives who can ONLY tell you to do it online, which is false advertising, or busy signals, or even "the number you dialed cannot be reached". I don't want fraud alert, I want to stop it before it is fraud!
1
The business model was to amass personal information on the public, and then charge them to safeguard it. How is this different than the run of the mill extortion scheme ran by criminal organizations? Equifax (or Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Apple, Microsoft....) gathers data on us and then leverages that information for profit, either through selling it to third-parties or requesting a monthly subscription fee to not do so. It's grotesque. But hey, where do I sign up?
1
I'm one of the victims plus my credit cards had been skimmed as well. ALL companies hid the information from me. My score plummeted because of the spending done on my credit cards yet they both admit the hack the phony charges but then declare that is had no effect on my credit when it was their site that had the Experian graph of my credit score showing who it went straight down after the hack and I have no other accounts or debts for them to try to blame it on.
I've gone to the CFPB to only find that will NOT help individuals but rather collect complaints to look for a trend. Every other agency says to go to them. In other words the consumer is yet a victim once more from our bribed leaders who have allowed these companies to exist with enormous power but are above liability and our laws. The the other agencies are forcing me to freeze my other accounts by REGISTERED MAIL clearly demonstrates both their disdain for their own product and their intense fear of being discovered for the abysmal business practices it gets away with.
We have been betrayed and we will have to be victims for years because our lazy rotten vile bribe taking politicians refuse to represent us.
6
We really need to get a hold of this issue now!
I've embarked on a personal crusade to remove my data from the web. I can speak from experience when I say it's very, very difficult. That being said, it's really worth it. I encourage everyone to take a good hard look at this meme with respect to their own lives.
If I want to share a photo, a video, or an item from the web with a friend, I'll send it to them by encrypted message. One-to-one, that's the way to share.
If you take the time to delete your social media accounts, fight with the information brokers like Intellius or Spokeo, government bureaus (like your local tax assessor) and the three credit agencies to lock up your information, you're far more safe.
Did you know that elected officials, members of the judiciary, and law enforcement professionals can have their data legally withheld from the web? If they can, then why not the general public?
Think of it this way, it's your data, you should own it, and you should have the right to limit who gets access. Why do companies get to ask for your social security number, even if it the underlying reason has nothing to do with taxes, wages, or benefits? That's nonsense! Why, if you want to get a home loan or a line of credit should the bank get to ask you for a copy of your tax returns? That's pretty invasive.
Maybe we need legislation, maybe we need regulation, but what we absolutely must have is people standing up for their rights to protect their personal data.
3
image republican's dream of a future? Loser controls of bank fees. No boundaries between banks and insurance companies, remember health care is an insurance product. Fewer insider trading investigation at a time the boundaries between brokerage houses . and investment banks is less. And no bail out of the public when the next bubble exploded. Only the banks and their owners.
1
Equifax has a 100+ year long record of customer abuse. They were so bad as Retail Credit Corporation that they changed their corporate name to Equifax in 1975 following Congressional hearings. At the time, they were interviewing your neighbors about your personal habits - parties, drinking, morals - any time you wanted to purchase insurance or gain consumer credit. That helps to explain why their general response to this latest breach was so hostile. They view it only as an opportunity to get consumers to buy one of their so-called protection plans.
There's also the broader question. The "customers" of Equifax (also TransUnion and Experian) are *not* you and me, but rather the banks, insurance companies, and anyone else who wants to check up on the personal financial (or other) status of consumers. We, the general public, are the *product* that they are selling. So we have three multi-billion dollar corporations, each making millions of dollars annually from information about us. And there's no recourse, since we automatically authorize these companies to collect all of our personal data every time we apply for a credit card, open a bank account, or take out a loan. They can probably tell you where I bought the banana I had in my breakfast cereal this morning.
I'd like to see Equifax charged under the 1970 RICO Act, which allows prosecution and civil penalties for racketeering activity performed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise. Then shut them down.
3
Somebody should be going to jail over this. But I doubt there will ever be any consequence for any of this.
2
So they'll just GET AWAY with it?
Just how many owners of the breached information consented for Equifax to acquire, keep and sell this information? Is it true that all the breached accounts were for people who signed up for credit monitoring?
Victims should obtain big judgments (not through class actions) and force them to declare bankruptcy. Then the new owners (the judgment creditors (a/k/a the victims). They'll jettison the old management and ensure the company respects the privacy of its accounts going forward.
2
To me this points to a broader point that is particularly discouraging with the current administration and state governments. That is, the support of corporations and the dismantling of protections for the common person. While I don't think unions are perfect but they do provide a counterbalance for individual workers against the power of the corporations. The Trump administration appears to want to close down the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau formed after the recession, again to protect the relatively powerless individual.
15
Another question is this mix - where is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? There priorities are askance when they miss this elephant in the room. I guess a "finance marketplace that works for American consumers" mission excludes credit reporting agencies.
9
Ever since the CFPB was created, Republicans have been fixated on shutting it down, and it's pretty clear that will happen very soon. Republicans believe the bureau is part of a regulatory system that inhibits economic growth, by protecting consumers. The CFPB can penalize companies for failing to make "reasonable" efforts to keep sensitive information out of the wrong hands, but can do little else. Congress could respond with new legislation to give the CFPB clearer authority to police the companies, but it will not. Republicans believe it is better to allow financial companies to work with little or no government oversight--like the credit reporting agencies who have no interest in, or incentive for, protecting consumers' information.
1
One of my credit card issuers gives me a "free" monthly report on any unusual activity on my credit report as well as my score. Interestingly, my (very) high score was lowered by 4 points in the space of just 30 days, for no discernible reason since absolutely nothing has changed in the way I conduct my financial life. Curious, but not curious enough for me to spend much time worrying about it as at my age, I'm not taking out any loans, probably ever again. Also, very interesting was that they had data on me going back 43 years! Seriously?!?
4
Karen, your FICO score will change by up to tens of points per month because as a dynamic measure it reflects changing data, including your day-to-day credit card balance. All the details are ostensibly secret, but the algorithm(s) will also ding you if you pay off and CANCEL a credit card because your outstanding balance among other cards is then a larger percentage of your maximum credit availability. Ooooh, bad!
That something that affects 145 million Americans has been relegated to the "business day" section of the nytimes pretty much says it all.
And our Wash DC lawmakers have been completely quiet on the entire matter.
So expect Equifax to remain unchanged in any meaningful way for years to come.
21
The reason that this whole issue has people upset is that the data can be used to do fraudulent things such as acquire loans or other forms of financial impersonation. Folks, I can find out virtually anything, including social security numbers, using various services. The real issue is that this data completes a profile to make fraud and impersonation easier. The way to stop it is to make such fraud impossible by giving the consumer ultimate choice.
Since our financial and legal actions are in most cases public acts or at least visible to the greater financial community and interested parties, we should be able to do other things to protect ourselves publicly. The members of the public should be able to make a statement on the credit bureaus and other appropriate public venues as to how they will perform certain acts. An example would be loans. The law should give me the option to only accept loans via wet-ink signature with full delivery and STORAGE of original documents and lenders should be required to honor this request. There should be a option to require attorney approval of any contract. Identity theft just went away. This does not eliminate high tech or innovation. These things will simply be conditional upon delivery of documents. Why should not a home equity line of credit require verified formal documents and processes.
Everything about you is already known and more is on the way. We are now tracked by phones and consumer data is cross linked.
4
You are correct. The data lost by Equifax is already out there. Through breaches of retailers, government agencies (i.e. the VA, Secret Service, Pentagon have all been hacked), unwitting county clerks placing the wrong data online, and our own rent, mortgage, and credit card applications. Moving forward, if there is a spike in identity theft and the opening of illegitimate accounts (let's forget about Wells Fargo for now) it will be up to the credit agencies to justify that their product and services are reliable. When they can't, they are doomed and a better system will emerge.
1
The IRS has enough information on each of us that any lending institution can make a sound judgment of our credit worthiness. The IRS can simply set up a division similar to these credit bureau's and charge comparable fees. Perhaps in doing so it would reduce any income tax increase in the next four years!
8
I strongly disagree. By law, the information on our tax returns can only be used for tax purposes. That's very much as it should be. (There are some limited exceptions such as for non-profit organizations)
Now, the IRS has itself had serious data breaches, allowing hackers to obtain information from individuals' tax returns. But that's a different story.
2
The IRS has no clue as to the 40% of or economy (the "grey" or "off the books" economy) that is not recorded or under-recorded. The IRS as been gutted in recent years to protect the so-called "nonprofits" from being investigated as to their finances. Despite a robust economy, tax receipts collected by the Fed are down.
ok, I hacked the IRS and I have President Trump's unreleased tax returns.
now accepting bids.
Mr. Trump, you may bid first.
Mr. Kim, please sit down and wait your turn.
Who/What actually oversees Equifax, Experian, Transunion? If I had a prolonged dispute with Equifax and my data proved correct I have no ability to preclude Equifax from collecting untold amounts of data on my children. When several large companies experienced dat breaches did any oversight committee ask the Credit agencies to report what safeguards they were putting in place to avoid the same issue? This public jeopardy has been ignored by Republicans and Democrats alike but as the Trump administration sanctions less rigorous standards for clean water and air; as food inspectors are considered less necessary, the consequences will be more devastating. Disparaging conservation and labeling the science of climate change an impediment to economic welfare will result in greater infringements on our individual well being and the belated outcry followed, by the inability to act decisively will once again result in congressional outrage when it is both too little and too late.
3
It is not enough to provide free credit freezes. A credit freeze should be the DEFAULT for everyone. Credit agencies should automatically impose a freeze on all accounts. Start off by doing this for all new customers. Then gradually transition in all the previous customers.
This action would not necessarily be a huge money-loser for the agencies. They can still be allowed to charge fees whenever people ask for their freeze to be dropped, either temporarily or permanently. But there should never be a charge for re-adding a freeze. Having a freeze is a basic security measure customers should not have to request.
21
I'm really amazed at all the comments here in which people are demanding their rights from Equifax and the others. Understand, we're the product, not the customer, we agreed to this when we signed loan, credit card and similar agreements, and as such we have no rights in this at all. And screaming "mommy" and running to the federal government would make an even bigger mess.
When it comes to these companies, we must think of ourselves as chickens on a chicken farm. Run around, make noise, but in the end we're just someone's dinner.
8
We did NOT sign up for in-detail monitoring of our personal lives,including credit histories, simply for having a cable subscription, utility services, a job, or a credit card. We did not sign up to have our twitter accounts monitored for an interest in purchasing things.
And we certainly didn't agree to have our personal data treated with such a lack of care.
It is not screaming "mommy" to demand justice and accountability.
36
We are dealing with a very powerful company who are basically grifters and can destroy your life.
2
I am not convinced that having the Federal Government be the repository of this kind of information would be the best solution. Recall the breach of the OPM where background information was obtained. I would think a better solution would be some very strict guidelines should be drawn up with the requirement that an outside auditing firm be brought in to review the processes as well as code review to insure data security. There is something drastically wrong when information can be captured through the use of a website. I do not relish the thought of organizations such as Equifax handling my personal data, but, the process is now in place. I do feel full disclosure of what the data is used for should be a legal requirement. Filtered data is made available to interested companies for such things as demographics, income concentrations by zip code, etc. It would be nice to see a list of other companies Equifax owns as well. Most importantly, I would like the companies of this type be very clear that the information they handle can be very devastating to the economic well being of the people it represents if mis-handled. The companies that gather this data must be held to the highest standards when it comes to data security, and, must be responsive to their product, namely Us. If there is inaccurate information found on a credit report, we should not have to jump through hoops to get it corrected, only to have the error re-appear in the future.
5
Re the OPM hack, my service in Peace Corps left me with the "action" that monitoring blah, blah would be provided...from time to time I'm informed that sex offenders are in my neighborhood. ( PC is under State Dept., which had records hacked, which led to OPM "action".)
I'd like to know how much the contract for monitoring was/is....
How is such a repeatedly failed corporation apparently allowed access to sensitive personal data allowed to continue to operate?
When will our government step up to protect the security of individual Americans over the so called rights of corporations?
Antitrust law exists to protect consumers considering the hazards of monopolies or near-monopolies. Argued legal aspects of "corporate personhood" have been over extended.
If Equifax is one of three "permitted" entities to control this sensitive data and they've repeated failed, pull whatever license they have. Better yet, ask why only three corporations are allowed and under what conditions they are allowed to operate under whose watchful eyes.
9
"Equifax said the executives were unaware of the breach when they sold their stock."
- - - -
That's just horse manure. A colossal breach is confirmed and several days later some C-level executives execute unplanned stock sales? Shouldn't there have been an immediate quiet period?
35
They have also acknowledged that they had a previous massive breach in March. So, they knew their company was a liable dead man walking when they sold the stock.
The consumer, me, should be able to have Equifax unalterably destroy all the information they have on me. Without question. The credit bureaus should be selected by the consumer and under contract detailing services rendered and protections sponsored by the bureau. In addition, the consumer can withdraw from a bureau with notice.
18
As someone who spent over thirty years working in the credit reporting field I'm thrilled to see the methods and products of this industry revealed to an often unaware public.
27
What is the justification for not allowing consumers to see their own credit reports whenever they see fit?
Congress ought to pass a law. Yesterday.
25
Along with the breach, I'd like to hear a conversation about the inaccurate data Equifax, Experian and TransUnion all continue to get away with, with no accountability for thier mistakes that too often causes innocent customers to have ther credit scores compromised.
22
Equifax should be required to refund all fees to customers whose personal data it lost. It should also be required to establish a trustee to cover the economic losses sustained by customers.
21
Tell me again why we need "credit bureaus" ???? They get private information from the government (don't ask me how) and then charge us to keep it secure? How stupid can we be? And the "breach" – how's that for FAKE NEWS. Talk about a scam – they get a hold of our private information and now we're supposed to pay them to check up on it's security. Yeah, the first year is free and so is this doobie. After that you gotta pay.
21
@Kurt Remarque
You are mistaken. Private information is NOT obtained from the government. It's obtained from your employer, and from wherever you have credit.
It’s despicable and they are totally culpable so are our reps in the State and Federal government, how could they never have looked into the safeguards of our information. While they didn’t use Kapersky a Russian cyberware company, and there are many, any American company that does are idiots. They are our enemy as are the Chinese. Business, ok as allowable but anything cyber no.
In Russia, China and North Korea to name a few they have countless people working 24 hours a day on breaching security of American companies as well as the highest level of education with the curriculum of understanding our history and analyzing our reaction to events politically and culturally. We are in the dark. Can’t our government protect us. Equifax interest is their stock price and inflow not consumer protection. What can we have confidence in?
Consumer protection? No
Environmental challenges? No
Climate change of super accelerated dangerous heating of the planet and oceans creating hurricanes like an assembly line? No. Our President? No? The stock market and banks with no protections and deregulation? No. This presidency is parallel to the incompetence of Equifax. This political and social climate is bad. We, the country, the planet can’t survive the chaos of this Presidency. Even this one term would be too long. Irreparable damage and he may create nuclear war. He has to stop provoking like dumb Queens kid He has to leave office. Equifax heads should go and congressional hearings are i
9
Which employers are participating in this? That list should be made public
17
I agree and we should as employees have the right to not to.
I'm scratching my head over that one too. Why would Walmart and Kroger voluntarily turn over payroll information to these people? Someone wants a loan? Show the lender your last X number of pay stubs; show the lender your W-2 from the previous year, whatever, but you show the lender the information requested, not have the lender turn to a credit bureau to verify (which data may or may not have been entered correctly). Ridiculous system.
One almost hopes whoever hacked Equifax creates such chaos that the whole scam implodes on itself, much like the health care repeal and replace debacle.
When my dentist's office calls to confirm an appointment, and my wife answers the phone, my dentist's office cannot legally tell my wife what they are calling about. If our medical information is so carefully protected, why is our credit info out there in cowboy land?
Credit agencies should not have the right to collect information on us without our express permission, nor should they be allowed to divulge our info without our informed approval.
And most of all, credit reporting services should NOT have the right to charge US to view our information, correct it, or block its dissemination.
Credit info is as critical as medical info.
This is OUR data; block corporation profiteering on our backs!
33
@Ted
If someone in the U.S. finds a way to make money, there's no institution to stand in their way.
If Equifax knew of the potential for data breach, and sold their services as a sales pitch to protect consumer's credit, there is a legal term for such conduct. It is 'Fraud'.
27
Equifax is scrubbing social media sites? Great, now I will never get a mortgage.
3
Why is our Government not pulling their Corporate Charter to do business? Oh that's right the government is owned by Corporations.
15
The question no one seems to be asking: who did it? Where is the global manhunt for these criminals that stole the data?
55
It would appear that credit rating would be best done by the Federal government, and clearly some of the high end executives in the credit rating business belong in jail , fraud if nothing else.
11
The government? Really? The OPM breach was even deeper than the one at Equifax.
Can anyone go to jail? Please, just once we need to enforce some semblance of justice. I'm afraid that no one will be penalized except us private citizens and then it'll be back to business as usual. When are we ever going to collectively say, 'Enough.'? Why do these sorts of crimes happen over and over again in this country without anyone ever going to prison? Stop rewarding greed and theft so generously. These Equifax crooks need to be put into prison and not a country club one in Connecticut. Or they'll just continue doing their corruption and malfeasance. Once again, we lose.
13
Charge the Equifax executives who are responsible. Put them in jail. Do not grant bail. That's step #1.
20
Simple question: Why is this not being covered on the front page of the NY Times, day after day? Ron Lieber should be getting a lead on this far beyond the "Your Money" column. We get updates on every detail of Apple's tenth iPhone, but almost no usable information on the potential theft of millions of citizens' identity, credit information, tax and social security IDs, etc.?
New York Times, get to work!!
32
That would actually help the average Joe-not the elites-so don't hold your breath. As usual just a bunch of noise without any effect. Don't see anyone from 2008 crash in jail.
1
This will disappear off of the pages of the news in say another week or so. Forgotten.
1
Don't give them any more personal information. Do NOT give them the last 6 digits of your SS #. That will end up part of a breach too.
8
As a bankruptcy attorney I use credit reports. When I signed up for Equifax, I was required to provide them with several levels of security. They sent someone to check on it, a woman who spoke endlessly of her divorce and really did not check anything. I have more security for my files than they do. They are scoundrels.
9
As galling as the Equifax breach has been, the fact that so many are "shock" that banks, corporations and the government have massive bits and bytes of data on each of us head scratching. And that people are oblivious that these organizations - particularly the government - do an less than stellar job of securing that data is even more astounding. Then add on the almost facile comments by readers of the NY Times, its a wonder that some commenters even know how to use a computer.
The slicing and dicing of the massive amounts of data collected in our economy since the advent of the computer age is THE reason we have a system where you can be approved for credit as you are waiting on a check out line. It also means million of people in America and around the globe now have access to relatively cheap credit to buy homes, cars, start a business and use credit cards. People - we are living in a golden age of personal financial freedom - especially if you have a good job and are a responsible borrower.
Yet, the downside is that it also means some portion of people are irresponsible and get in to debt, usually more than they can handle. That then leads to the sub-prime debt market, a lender of last resort that is more than willing to take advantage of irresponsible borrowers' profligacy and charge what once would have been usurious interest rates.
As the new economy has afforded millions unheard of economic capabilities, so it also requires greater vigilance.
1
If this is not Big Brother, I do not know what is. It is all just so overwhelming. I wish there was a way to go off-grid. But of course, it is impossible.
42
Equifax' treatment of PII (personal identifying information) was utterly negligent. The vulnerability that was exploited had been publicized for months before the Equifax breach and Equifax did nothing to secure our (OUR) data.
Only personal liability on the part of management will deter negligence in companies like Equifax. I hope to see the company and its responsible management ruined ruined in court proceedings. Equifax should be liquidated and its managers forced into personal bankruptcy.
12
I am not sure about liquidated, but I Could buy into nationalized or have ownership turned over to the 143 million people who were affected.
4
"For profit" of personal highly confidential data such as those required to compute credit reports is just wrong.
4
Given the anti-regulatory fever of the Federal government, I'm wondering if the States have the power to protect their citizens' privacy and require Equifax to make them whole after this egregious breach. At minimum, Equifax should be made to provide free identity theft protection for life.
Also, instead of having to go through the arduous process of freezing and unfreezing credit reports, how about requiring the credit bureaus to obtain permission from customers before releasing the information? I'm betting this could be automated by phone, similar to the way two-factor identification works. The responses could be "Yes," "No," or "Fraudulent."
9
I wouldn't trust Equifax to do anything whatsoever. I think they should go out of business post haste.
7
Both the board and the entire management team are too tainted but some need to stay to keep the light on. If this guy is so cluelsss about Equifax, he can go - NOW!
2
Equifax has to be used by everyone and forced to protect us for 50 years
2
Equifax should be out of bussiness. They can't provide the 'service' they were set out to provide. All the information they pretend to provide about people's credit worthiness has been compromised. No lender in their right mind should trust Equifax' scores and if they do they are making themselves liable. Equifax is a dead-man-walking.
Equifax has offered free credit monitoring for a year and a half. After that customers must pay for the service. The legal principle that one shouldn't benefit from one's crimes (ex turpi causa non oritur actio) would seem to apply. Equifax should be required to offer free fraud and credit monitoring for life OR they should have their license revoked, their contracts torn up.
53
You are correct!!
3
What? And stop the mafia business techniques that are robbing us blind every day, C. Ward? YES! At every level of government.
No doubt Dr. Frankenstein thought the same thing when his monster opened its eyes. Later when he had to kill it he no doubt blamed the monster for having to. But that's pure fiction. I say full steam on the internet, social media, data gathering, algorithms, etc. It will be fine with enough patches and nobody bad would dare mess with it. The world can never have enough amazing new products. Whatever the cost it's a small price to pay for such amazing things.
1
“The chief business of the American people is business.”
– Calvin Coolidge, Republican President, 1925
Even with the Crash of 1929, 4 years after Cal’s quote, nothing has really changed since then. If anything, things have gotten worse with SCOTUS decisions like “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission”.
With this Equifax incident, my credit reports were already frozen. I was a customer of the health insurance company, Aetna, two years ago when 80 million of its customers were hack. My personal data has been out in the “dark web” at least since then.
In the meantime, there’s been no significant change in laws protecting consumers. If there had been, 143 million would have been better protected from predatory companies like Equifax.
My only hope now is to become part of a class-action suit against Equifax. The company’s net worth, when liquidated, will only provide a few dollars to each of the 143 million. But, one would hope, at least Equifax will cease to exist, and its shareholders will be decimated. Then, we can move on to Transunion and Experian, assuming our Republican and Democratic legislators are not fully owned by the latter two.
P.S. Whether you have to pay Equifax to freeze your report depends on which state you live in. Living in a “blue state”, I didn’t have to pay anything. Your experience will vary by state, just like it will under the current Republican health care proposal before the Senate.
11
"nothing has really changed since then. If anything, things have gotten worse with SCOTUS decisions like “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission”."
Rubbish. You must have missed FDR's New Deal.
A little late to complain about unregulated monopolies. They litter the capitalistic landscape, if you choose to look.
I guess it only matters if you get burned by one.
11
Who gave the three credit bureaus life-or-death powers over our fiscal lives?
9
The entire credit rating system is a fraud and a farce. The underlying concept claimed is that it is there to facilitate more accurate assessment of credit risk so that financial products such as loans from home mortgages, car loans and general credit card use can be provided to consumers by financial institutions. But the reality is that it is a type of Ponzi-scheme like system used as an excuse to charge people ever higher rates. How high are interest rates? Fed funds are 1.25%, 2-yr treasuries are 1.44%, 10-yr treasuries 2.25%, 30-yr treasuries are2.78%, so why are credit card rates 16.7%? Why are student college loans so high? Because of Equifax, Experian and TransUnion? The system is designed to charge you as much as possible and keep you in perpetual debt, and scrape every last penny from you for your entire life - something like modern day slavery, or a sort of digitized serfdom. We should outlaw credit rating agencies and require loans to be not more than a few fractions of a percent higher than the cost of capital to financial institutions based on those ultra-low interest rates they have access to.
They also use credit rating data to justify whether or not you will be rented an apartment or given a job. That should stop as well. These credit rating agencies aren't there to help, they are there to suppress and exploit - which they do quite well. And yet they are too stupid to protect private sensitive personal information from being hacked by criminals.
138
Brilliant Timbuk. Brilliant.
2
Stunningly they also use ratings to raise insurance rates. Having never made an insurance claim, over 38 years of marriage - I was shocked to find that our insurance company raised our rates by ten percent because there was a tiny change in out credit rating - I still don't know what the change was about. It is unbelievable, and until we all start writing our Senators about reigning it in - nothing will change.
2
Credit card rates are high because they are an unsecured loan, essentially a higher risk for the lender.
Since the credit reporting system is a necessary component of our economy and the existing firms benefit from having a monopoly position on a necessity of life, perhaps they should be regulated in the same manner as public utilities such as water and electricity. This would give the public interests greater control and stop unethical expansions of their businesses into every area of a person's life.
1
I froze credit reporting at all 4 credit agencies. I just received a flyer from Dish TV and it said that Equifax had sent my credit information to them and they were making an offer. Not solicited by me. This was after I froze the information. What good does freezing your information do if the credit agencies are going to sell your information anyway?
10
Jak, you can stop all 3 companies from selling their lists to outside companies for "life." Go to Experian & look for the permanent opt out form & keep your fingers crossed. Good luck.
1
As an American living in Italy I see this as just one of the many distopias that we have allowed to grow like cancer in the U.S. These things are unimmaginable here in Europe. Let us put our representives to the heat for this. They have allowed our privacy to be degraded. Let's start flooding their phone lines with complaints.
18
How many of the world's greatest innovators, largest market caps and best known brands were founded in Italy?
1
Why has no one been charged? oh yeah, white collar crimes are not criminal.
24
Some articles suggested that anyone concerned about ID theft should initiate a credit freeze with the top 3 credit reporting agencies. In my state these companies are allowed to charge $10 for a freeze. I bet Experian and Tranunion are making a lot of cash off this breach of security - in my home that's $40.
It is very weird that I am a victim of someones lack of security with information they collect about me, that I never asked to have collected - and now I must pay them to initiate a credit freeze.
42
I have been trying to open a wireless phone account. They require a credit report from Equifax (for no good reason that I can see.) I have been unable to lift the Equifax freeze, and have a new smart phone but no way to use it.
6
Open a prepaid account. It is more of a pain, but at least you can get on line.
Equifax is above the law, just like any other corporation in America. In this country corporations are treated differently. They have all the rights of people. In addition, they can "die" whenever their owners wish by claiming bankruptcy in the courts, thereby avoiding both legal and moral responsibilities. They can contribute to political causes and campaigns with as much money as they wish under the First Amendment as protected speech. Finally, they lobby our Congress and Administration in association with other groups using cash as their calling card. Equifax is above the law, just like every other corporation in America. Money talks in America.
100
I would like to see what their development, change control, and operational environments were like. I suspect they were probably lacking in basic controls, such as separation of functions and independent verification of code validity and integrity. Probably everyone just did whatever they needed to do to get systems into production, without testing, without documentation, without secure code versioning.
In essence, Equifax is just a bunch of programs running on servers. That is their core business. How can they ignore basic principles in their primary and only function?
3
For those who aren't yet alarmed by the lack of privacy in the US, this should be a huge red flag to the danger of having our personal information being collected across the web (Google, Facebook, Amazon...) and being sold. And let's not forget the fake profiles created on social media - how do we not know that someday those same phony profiles could tarnish very real ones?
It has been outrageous that third-party corporations should have even had access to our private credit information in the first place, and then become the ultimate arbiter to our financial reputation while having no responsibility whatsoever in safekeeping that reputation. Consumers already knew this before the breach; Equifax's reaction to the breach only underscores their utter contempt for consumers, while rushing to preserve their own profits.
The other obvious red flag is that once again, corporations cannot be left to police themselves.
18
Experian is not offering free credit freezes to those who have reason to bellieve they were affected by the Equifax breach. The only free credit freeze I could find on their website was one in which you had to prove you had been a victim of identity theft with a verified police report. I phoned Experian to freeze my credit after the Equifax breach and, first of all, there was no opportunity to speak to a real person. Secondly, I was able to freeze my credit (at least presumably, since I received no verification or confirmation code or number), but only after paying them $10.
7
If you take part in anything the Experian weasels offer concerning this you give up your right to participate in a class action suit later. Be advised.
3
@Anita - Fees that the credit agencies can charge are set by individual state regulations. Call your state representatives and demand they pass legislation to make all interactions with the credit bureaus fee-free.
2
I think you may be confusing Experian and Equifax. They are two separate companies.
I called them today because they wouldn't let me freeze my account online. They said with some kind of "TRUSTED ID" program (another company) they can put a freeze on my account but they need me to update my information. I told them I didn't want another company and I just wanted a freeze on all three of the credit companies. They said they have no power over all three credit companies and I have to call all three to put a total freeze on my credit. Plus if I don't go with the one year for free with TRUSTED ID I cant put a freeze on my account with equifax due to the information they are missing from me. NOW WHY WOULD I WANT EQUIFAX TO HAVE MORE INFO ON ME????!!!! So I would have to send all my info into their office (that they are missing) and call back to see if they got it and then put a freeze on my account? Then comes to find out even if I did go with TRUSTED ID I still can't put a freeze on my info because I still have to send my info into Equifax. They refused to put a freeze on my info today. This is a complete gimmick. Think about it, a breach= more online traffic and more TRUSTED ID costumers, but no consequence? This country is out of control
45
That's what they always do if there's a problem. They refuse to fix the problem until you agree to refresh your information held in their database. They want us to supply the labor and info that they profit from.
2
Our credit scores can make or break us. We need stewards not profiteers managing ours. Equifax has failed in its duties and responsibilities when it comes to protecting our most sacred personal-data. But they still found ways to squeeze out every drop of profit possible. In our current money centric world Equifax has shown contempt for us and they have exposed us to more drama, trauma and wreckage than the average Jan and Joe should expect from a contracted entity. A broken contract used to have consequences. If that's over then our markets float on an endless sea of feces and our homes are worth what we can get out of them in a short sale. Our businessman-in-thief might have something to say about it, but I doubt he understands the true nature of credit ratings . . . that would require a basic understanding of, "good faith."
15
Equifax sold my credit report information to Dish TV after I froze my credit report. Now I receive Dish offers in the mail. Who else did they sell information to? So much for the security of a frozen account.
12
It's a good sales pitch: We know everything about everyone. How did we get all of those data? Well, let's just say that we're good with such things. Don't worry about the little people. We are the behemoth you want to be in bed with. Trust us.
3
Automatic and free freeze for every credit file must be made mandatory right away. Congress needs to act fast before more "people" lose hours of time, sleep and dollars because of incompetence of our "job creators".
53
Why is this industry not HEAVILY regulated to FORCE them into complying with the highest possible security procedures? Why are we placed at risk so the executives and owners of these firms can get rich?
Congress, why aren't you protecting the American people?
82
Oh, you know, regulations kill jobs!
Congress could care less - unless maybe some of their info gets hacked, too.
1
Only Trump can fix it.
What does the word fix mean?
One definition of fix is the equivalent of "to rig," as in putting in a "fix" on a horse race, or a credit swindle, or a degree from Trump University.
To borrow from Mick Jagger:
But what else can a Con Man do, expect to join in a rock-n-roll band . . .
3
If the credit reporting agencies are making money off my information then I want a piece of the fee.
27
Mr Smith should be fired immediately. He will not be because those of his board of directors are despicable cowards. Pressure will build however, so he will eventually be fired. What is astounding about this is that those with responsibility for the software development and even more so for secure practices in software development ignored a very basic requirement in any software development that uses the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) for transmission of a request from a computer browser to the machines which handle the Equifax services: never apply the data provided in the request to the computer code that does the servicing of the request without first checking/filtering the data sent. This is one of the most fundamental aspects of processing data anywhere in any computer application. The irresponsibility for this rests 100% with Mr. Smith, not just with the subordinates whom he has already fired. He should be gone now, but it will takes some time yet, before pressure on the board of directors is too strong to ignore.
6
He needs to be prosecuted not fired. Probably has a nic departure package that puts him ahead.
6
These corporations judgments about our "suitability" for credit that collect our personal data and invent and other psuedo facts about us from it are basically fraudulent.
We are all owed lifetime protection. Then We are owed all of the money Equifax has generated during its fraudulent existence as payment for the damages they have done us all. I mean to claw back every penny form every investor and former employee. They are all responsible for it.
It is high time Wall Street is put on notice that they must not only stop robbing us they must repay all that was stolen.
6
Equifax has surrendered the right to be in business. Shut them down for good. Why do we need THREE credit reporting agencies anyway? Two do enough damage as it is. Hard to believe, but Republicans want to legislate protection for credit agencies from any liability for damages resulting from hacking their databases. I am yelling at my computer right now. I'll spare decent readers the printed version.
12
The Equifax debacle is a microcosm of the moral depravity we have allowed financial firms, from hedge funders to pay day loan sharks to engage in without financial over sight, much less a price paid for unethical behavior.
Those who prey on the vulnerable may be at the top of the financial heap without a care about rampant financial instability in America. However, when we all know 'homeless' Americans are more prevalent than anytime since the great depression and millions are living paycheck to paycheck as a direct result of their financial practices we have to acknowledge we're witnessing the results of modern day 'robber barons' gone wild. Shame on them and shame on us for letting them get away with it for far far too long.
13
You forgot the mortgage debacle! And throw in reverse mortgages too.
3
When the executives dumped their stocks for profit before it hit the fan, how is this not "insider trading?"
Why are they not being prosecuted?
70
I took Experian up on their offer to search the Dark Web for my email address and sure enough, they confirmed one of my passwords for a website whose user-list was hacked and included me.
It was bad enough that Experian, whom I never authorized to store my private data, incompetently let it get hacked...
But the next worst thing that could happen - did: Experian is now sending me emails trying to get me to sign up and pay $$ per month so they can "monitor" and "protect me" from the next time THEY get hacked!
They are trying to profit from their mistakes that they should get punished for, not reward with new revenues. Shame.
9
When someone offers you credit, they are just giving you the chance to pay for the privilege of surrendering your freedom.
4
If they are going to try to fix this thing with emails and web sites, who can trust them? People get phishing emails every day.
3
Making matters worse... The Equifax site for enrollment to their "protection scheme" is blocked for users outside the U.S.... There are approx 9 million U.S. expats abroad, and they are generally very vulnerable to identity theft, as it will likely take them longer to notice and react to it.
49
I found myself in this exact situation here in Italy! a few weeks ago!
2
I'm not hearing anything substantive from members of Congress. Is Equifax too big to fail? Too big to be sued? Too big to be put out of business? Apparently they are.
161
follow the money...
4
...and who in Congress do they pay off...or have the goods on?
3
Never, Mr. Spanier. No one and no thing is too big to fail. The answer is for every single one of us who is furious over this must vote for socially conscious people who will put 99% of us first. We have a new crop of people ready and willing to take action for us. They are your neighbors who truly believe in the American dream of social/economic justice for ALL Americans. Vote for them.
1
CEO's exist in a culture of their own. It would help if others in that culture treated Smith as a pariah until he did everything necessary to make this right.
4
Potentially, if I was turned down for a car or house loan, a job, a rental or whatever because Equifax had false data on my credit report, couldn't I sue them?
This is all so life threatening and utterly beyond corrupt.
Your or my future is all in the hands of these evil, derelict delinquents.
Think of how many lives have been destroyed or ruined.
Contempt towards Equifax and the others should be on full display.
Sue them until they go out of business. And jail them as well.
If we do not, they will just continue messing with each and every one of us.
Nice country we live in.
10
So where is Congress? How come we haven't heard a peep the last two weeks about needing to regulate the credit bureaus more strictly?
Oh....that's right...it's because the GOP doesn't believe in regulation.
19
The stock is down 30% since the breach, the article states. What isn’t mentioned is since it bottomed on Sep 15th around $92.16 it has been on the rise, now at $105+ a 15% increase in just over 7 days. So what does mean to the investing community, also known as the robber barons? Opportunity!
Rather sad. Before you know it Equifax will be at an all-time high again. May have to fire the CEO and a few others. Of course they’ll offer up the cleaned up version of Equifax, sort of, and continue selling our personal information to the highest bidder.
Don’t you just love capitalism? Not!
10
Sounds like the credit freeze algorithms are over loaded and not working very well, but hey they are just computer code. In order to do anything, we need to license and index ALL data sellers. Sure we know who the big ones are but how about the thousands you don't know about. How can this be regulated without first identifying the players? You can't. It's a One Trick Algo game out there and when they fail, well you see what's going on.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2017/04/one-trick-algo-world-needs-to-be....
In the United Corporation of America there is no accountability.
9
Mr. Wyatt Jefferies, you lie when you say your company is helping out. Actually, your company is pushing customers around. I can't even freeze my account on Equifax site - get "error 500", familiar anyone? I can't get credit monitoring your company promised either. Filled out the page and waited for the email/text, in vain. And reading complaints on web, I know I'm not alone. Maybe is time for talking with an attorney.
1
With a president and a political party in power that regardsordinary people with contempt, I would not look for any major changes any time soon.
6
If you want to stick it to the credit reporting agencies, you could file formal disputes on line with each of them for each instance of error in their reports. Your report is likely chock full of misspellings and other minor errors that you have overlooked in the past. Our fair credit laws require the companies to investigate each dispute claim, and report back to you. Can you just imagine millions of such requests descending on these companies every day? Besides providing an opportunity for increased employment, it would put pain where it belongs, and your credit report would properly represent you, which is your right!
1
Like George Orwell's "1984".
1
I hope lawyers sue this company down to zero.
2
Equifax has just lost its hostages.
This irresponsible company should be sued into oblivion.
1
All of us are the unwitting, unwilling victims of this criminally negligent corporation, which chose to buy and sell us as if we were commodities, with zero regard whatsoever for the safety of our most personal information. Their sole goal: ginning up greater profits. I simply do not believe that the executives who all dumped their stock "were unaware of the breach" - that smacks of an ex post facto lie and cover-up for their frantic efforts to glean maximum personal profit before the proverbial offal hit the fan. The entire executive team should be summarily fired; and the entire Board should resign as well. Those who engaged in insider trading, trying to beat the bad news, should be prosecuted for their crimes, and sent to prison. We the People are held hostage by these reckless, greedy plutocrats and corporations - and we are viewed as "collateral damage" in the process. Enough is enough! At a bare minimum, the default when a consumer places a lock on his/her credit information on one bureau. should be that the others must immediately follow suit, unless the individual expressly opts to open that information. If ever there were proof positive of the overarching imperative of the Consumer Protection Financial Board, this grotesque and criminal negligence affirms it. 9/23, 4:28 PM
8
The Equifax Epic Fail is what happens when Republicans in Congress hobble the federal agencies charged with regulating businesses. The Republican mantra is "freedom for businesses" -- no matter what. They obviously learned no lessons from The Great Recession.
4
Twenty years ago I dug myself out of a $10,000 debt, a herculean task for a self employed artist who had used debt to pay necessary bills. That was a harsh lesson. I no longer have a credit card and have lived within my means since then. Best decision I ever made.
While I understand the benefits of credit for the young who are starting family, need an infrastructure, and will have an income to support that investment. The simple fact that Canadians have a debt to disposable income ratio of 171%, the United States, 113%, essentially means the average Canadian and American is underwater as a matter of course, never mind an unforeseen event like an interest hike or job loss. This is nuts.
Buy now! Pay later! We are so invested in that necessity, we fail to understand the implications of the contract we sign. Yoked to debt for the rest of our lives. Guess who reaps the benefits of that?
4
Unfortunately, it's not just whether you have open lines of credit or not. Even those with zero debt have social security numbers, employment information, previous addresses, or records of bill payments (e.g. utility bills) stored by these credit bureaus. But I agree with you that Americans generally spend too much, save too little, and rely on credit to bridge the gap.
4
Congress needs to write some laws that will come down on Equifax and the other two credit bureaus like a ton of bricks. And that should apply to all the credit card issuing organizations, the banks and savings and loan organization and any other institution that has records on us.
We should not have to wait to try and get through to the credit bureaus to freeze our accounts, no they should go ahead and freeze everyone account now and write us to confirm that they did this and tell us how we can remove the freeze. And these companies should not be charge us any fees to freeze or unfreeze our account. It is our information isn't it?
Write your senators and congress representative and give them demands that they do something now; not when they feel like it now.
1
Congress should force Equifax to freeze the credit of everyone whose identity has been compromised. I don't really understand why 149 million people have to call Equifax to get that done, one at a time.
12
At this point in time it is pretty safe to say that, in regards to credit, the information of all Americans has been compromised. We all need either new social security numbers or a National ID card with an additional number and fingerprints to cross reference it, like they have in many European countries where identity theft is so rare people don't know what you are talking about when you bring the topic up. We must do this before it is too late and our whole system is so compromised that no one can proof who they are.
8
The top CEO and other execs should be held criminally responsible for this breach. Where was the head of technology? He/she should be immediately fired. No excuse for what happened.
I spent a lifetime building big databases for banks, law firms and the large corporations. Security is hard I know but this should have never happened.
3
I don't expect Congress to do a thing. Big Data is one of their political donors. After all that's the American way. Right?
6
When is the NSA going to step up and turn all that talent and firepower to recommending and helping to implement of critical systems throughout the US in industry, academia, and government? Big job, I know, and one that will likely always need continual improvement, but breaches and theft have become a major security issue for everyone in the US.
The "free market" will do diddly unless it affects their bottom line. I am sure that our talent in this area is the equal or better than anything in the rest of the world. I would say this every bit as high a priority as monitoring 10s of thousands of potential terrorists around the world and snooping around other government's systems - we can still do that, but the computer security "infrastructure" of our country really appears to be porous - dangerously so.
Identity theft is also a major life hassle for many, and intrusions into businesses, universities, and government systems probably have added up to significant losses in intellectual property and information that needs to remain private. I think this calls for a focused national effort involving our best talent.
3
Isn’t it obvious at this point that each consumer’s credit history should be their own property?
We should have the ability to turn access to our personal credit history off and on using secure multi-factor authentication techniques. Those techniques are used today to restrict access to our banking, credit card, and investments accounts and should be made mandatory at each company that collects and/or reports credit information.
32
Yes it is obvious but admitting to that would require the folks involved to let go of the "assumption of guilt" they impose on all of us so effectively we do it to each other without even realizing it.
1
I am coming to the realization that I will always want my credit frozen. Just got a letter from Experian, after freezing credit, asking if I want it to be for always, instead of 5 years. Yes, I do not want any more credit pre-approval. Also, I would like a class-action lawsuit to pay back the 4 years and 9months of 'protection' I purchased from Equifax. Everyone should go to their state AGs and ask them to do this class-action lawsuit.
37
If your credit is frozen you can't operate in this world. You want to buy or lease a car or house /apartment you will need to unfreeze it. This is not a good option to freeze it. Instead these companies like Equifax that profit from our data need to be regulated and taxed. Or disbanded. Private for profit companies do not need to control our credit scores and affect our life quality and safety.
1
Equifax and its competitors Experian and TransUnion constitute a tyranny, an evil empire that must be brought to heel. From everything that I can see I successfully froze my Equifax credit report as soon as I learned of the breach. Most likely I was able to do so because word of it had not yet been widely disseminated, and its systems had not yet been overwhelmed by other panicked consumers. I also signed up for the free credit monitoring, but am still waiting for the e-mail with the link that enables me to complete the sign-up. I also initiated freezes at Experian and TransUnion and had all my credit cards cancelled and reissued with new numbers. It is an absolute travesty that the personal data that is the "Keys to the Kingdom" of our financial well-being has been so shabbily protected. And what will happen to the Equifax executives who are accountable? Nothing or not much. All this and Trump too!
18
This catastrophe is a concrete example of what the hubbub was about when the NSA was asking for a backdoor to the iPhone on the pretext that it would allow them to uncover something important on the San Bernardino bombers phone.
The access to information which is not fully analyzed but characterized by "metadata" allows organizations beyond a person's control to make life changing decisions about that person's reputation, credit, and perhaps whether the some entity should target them for aggressive action. Like Equifax, the government, the investigative agencies, Russian intelligence, insurance companies, drug companies all want easy and low cost access to this personal information, and the individual can not defend themselves without appropriate governmental regulation.
For those who said "I have nothing to hide", the irony is that they don't, because Equifax has leaked it all over the internet.
Time to make personal information personal again, with release only based on the individual's consent, not to pad a corporate bottom line, or a malignant investigator.
12
Right to choose. Consumers should demand the right to choose if and which personal data is collected by these agencies. Granted, it's necessary for lenders to ensure that borrowers are worth the risk. But, in my view, that should be part of a government agency. Not managed by a for profit group, like this one, that can too often slide into placing corporate earnings over the safety and security of people.
9
"Too often"? Make that "ALWAYS."
I would just like to know when banks gave the job to credit companies to decide our suitability. All of a sudden years ago, the loan officer at the bank was calling someone else for my private information, information I thought I had only given to the banks. Then even I had to consult with them to find out where I stood. And try getting something incorrect removed! It's like it has become their information, not mine.
6
I would expect all credit bureaus ( and the information collectors that feed them data) are vulnerable and no one's personal information is safe. Perhaps other organizations have been exploited too and either they haven't realized it or they are delaying disclosing it (just as Equifax delayed making a public notification after they discovered their breach). In any case, all the bureaus claim our data is safe with them and I don't believe it based on what they have disclosed to date.
6
And nothing of consequence will change.
No one will go to jail.
We will still not be able to control the data about ourselves.
We will not be able to 'opt off' of sending our info to them.
Richard Smith may get fired, but he will be OK (golden parachute).
A fine may be paid, but Equifax's customers (that's ultimately Us) will pay it.
Most likely, congress will stymie any change that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau would enact that would help consumers.
Plus ça change . . .
33
The experience of trying to freeze my account on the special Equifax website has been disturbingly difficult. I made three attempts and to register and always received a message that an email would be sent to me. In all three cases nothing arrived. I finally received a phone number from my Congressman that enabled me to freeze my records by phone. That appeared to work. But the call was disconnected due to a "system error" when I tried to repeat the PIN confirmation message. Clearly Equifax is overwhelmed and does not have the ability to competently do much of anything but disseminate the data it collects on all of us. Now they have managed to disseminate it to criminals. I would like to be able to opt out completely. I do not trust this company.
114
Joe, I had the same experience you did re. the Equifax website set up to handle determine if my personal information was part of Equifax's security breech. There is no way to determine this, with certainty, without signing up for their data protection project.
The first person I spoke to via phone actually said that he couldn't tell me if he worked for Equifax or not!
The third person (who at least told me they worked for Equifax) would not listen to me when I told him the "special" Equifax site set up determine if a person's info. had been breeched was not secure.
Clearly Equifax, at this point, is overwhelmed with customer's trying to get a minimum of answers, and underwhelmed about their own responsibility in serving these same customers (I'm talking about the 130,000,000 individuals they have accumulated data on, not the conglomerates who pay them to regurgitate that information).
Shame on Equifax!
3
@Joe B. - It seems everyone continues to have difficulties with Equifax. It's even more alarming that they continue to put out PR drivel stating there's no problem as noted in the article:
'Equifax said it was supporting customers who may have been affected by the data breach. “We value our customers and have been in close communication with them,” said Wyatt Jefferies, a company spokesman.'
Close communication? Couldn't be further from the truth.
3
The only right thing to happen in this case is for Equifax to be sued out of existence, and the assets used to fund their victims. Literally millions of hours will be wasted in upcoming months and years trying to clean up identities for many of the 140M+ people impacted, all through no fault of their own. That might get the attention of the remaining credit reporting agencies.
The other minimum requirement is that all credit files are frozen by default. It is insane that this is not already the law, as it allows hackers to open bank and credit accounts. By definition, if it is a legitimate credit report request, the consumer should be the one enabling it.
The reason credit report freezing is not the default is simply to enable a whole cynical business model to develop around expensive "credit fraud monitoring" by the credit reporting agencies - the very ones who are the ones enabling the fraud!
234
This is exactly right. If enough of us freeze our credit reports at Equifax, perhaps that alone will cost them money as potential creditors turn to the other two major companies. It ain't much, but at least it's something we can do right now.
82
I tried to freeze my credit at Experian and they make it almost impossible. If I log in in my account and want to buy protection for $19.99/month there is problem with that, they'll take my money, but when I requested a credit freeze they said I need to send a letter with copies of SS#, drivers license, a bill, etc I think that is outrageous.
65
I agree, but if your data was stolen from Equifax (and you must presume that it was), it is imperative that you freeze your reports in all companies (since you don't know which company will be queried when a fraudulent account is opened). So, Equifax will not suffer more than its competitors as a result, unfortunately.
1
It seems a Class Action Suit is in order -- $1 trillion would not be too much.
118
Class actions suits rarely pay any decent amount of money to the victims. The VAST majority of the recovery goes to the attorneys. I think individual law suits would better serve each of us victims.
2
What--the victims are willing to settle for a coupon for future hacking services?
1
These companies routinely ruin peoples lives with easily correctable errors but do they make corrections? Good luck with that. Will our deadbeat Republican congress take any action? Not a chance, unless maybe, if the Democrats took a stand for maintaining the status quo. This country is going to hell in a hand basket.
If Equifax had any honor at all they would freeze all accounts and relieve the log jam then the few people who needed their accounts open would be able to get through.
Taking bets on how long it will take congress to investigate the obviously illegal trades, any takers. Lock em up!
79
If by "congress" you mean the Republican congress, you have a long wait ahead, my friend.
3
Yes, all accounts should be frozen! Period. Any institution giving credit based on a credit report should do it at their own peril, not the peril of consumers who have the burden of proving they are not the ones who asked for that credit. What a nightmare. Together with the next nightmare of applying for a new healthcare plan next month it seems that our system is designed by an evil entity who wants to drive people to the brink of utter despair.
The don't have any honor. Period. They gather and use highly confidential personal data, "for profit". They are worse than insurance companies. Well, nothing will change with the current government.
1
For $19.99 per month, Equifax will monitor your credit report.
8
A complete waste- They are the ones who have exposed your credit- I just canceled that 'service'.
1
And they make it very hard and dangerous (one has to gather a lot of ID documents and send them by mail) to put a freeze on your credit. I am not planning on asking for credit.
@Don - Equifax's subsidiary monitoring service has some of the worst user ratings for customer service.
1
Time for a class action lawsuit claiming say an average $5000 damages for each of 143 Million dissatisfied, unsolicited, highly impacted, victims.
Isn't that what a Constitution and Supreme Court that supports individual freedom is all about?
56
$5,000 is not nearly enough!!
If your identity is stolen it could take years to get your life back, plus the aggravation how about 1.8 million.
1
A class action lawsuit will get you a $20 off coupon for a $120 credit monitoring subscription.
1
We need a fundamental change to the rules surrounding consumer data in this country. We, the consumers, need the right to control who has our data and for what purpose it is to be used. Companies like Equifax -- there are dozens more -- buy our data second-hand and leverage it to make money. The profit is all theirs. The risk is all ours. This is out of balance. We need a Consumer Data Protection and Privacy law that resets this relationship, to bring a better balance to the consumer vs. company model in the U.S.
162
The Consumer Protection agency created by President Obama with the help of Elizabeth Warren is designed to do exactly this, and the Republicans are trying everything they can to destroy it.
Vote for members of Congress who will work for the American people instead of for the rich donor class that wants us to be weak, vulnerable, and constantly in their control.
50
And I'm sure the GOP which has such a great reputation for protecting the little people will be implementing these policies any day now! Right?
2
Besides voting for members of Congress who would support better controls, WRITE or CALL your Congressman or woman. Be they R or D, make sure they know they MUST do something to protect those who, because of the laws, cannot protect themselves. At the very minimum, all three credit agencies should make credit freezes free of cost for what ever period of time a consumer wants. These are Companies collecting all of your data (without your permission), charging you to access it, not protecting it, and then charging you to prevent others from accessing it. It is capitalism run amok.
3
The International Mafia, which controls these agencies along with every BIG business category that controls OUR lives, lies. About everything.
My proof? The Con Don. He is their talking head in America.
Time for WE THE PEOPLE to sue them out of existence, nationalize them and turn OUR private data of every kind over to OUR governments to protect.
The International Mafia has been trying to convince average people around the world to hate their governments so they can take them over, strip the assets, pocket the spoils and have ultimate power over the rest of us. Unfortunately, the hate-anger-fear-violence-WAR-Lies,Lies,Lies propaganda worked miraculously well in The United States of America. However, it's not too late. Average Americans, and even some of those who have profited so grossly from the hostile financial takeover of OUR government, are waking up an realizing they really love America and the way of life we have enjoyed since the depression (which, by the way, was caused by the same breed of Robber Barons).
Every single American who loves democracy for all Americans must step up, pick one thing they value most about our democratic way of life and fight like hell to save it. Every single social good since Teddy Roosevelt (trust busting and public lands) and FDR/Elanor are under attack.
This must not stand in The United States of America. Not now. Not ever again.
44