The Equifax Breach: What You Should Know

[Morreion]

The Equifax Breach: What You Should Know (Krebs on Security)

It remains unclear whether those responsible for stealing Social Security numbers and other data on as many as 143 million Americans from big-three credit bureau Equifax intend to sell this data to identity thieves. But if ever there was a reminder that you — the consumer — are ultimately responsible for protecting your financial future, this is it. Here’s what you need to know and what you should do in response to this unprecedented breach.

[Rakul]

Yeah... because we all need more stress in our lives by having thieves roll our "identity theft" dice.

[Jaema]

I get a little agitated at those comments like "you the consumer are ultimately repsonsible for protecting your financial future...." etc. Its not as if any American adult with "finances" has a choice about the enormous amount of personal data these credit agencies have on us really. And now they want me to take the extra step to request that they actively protect this information from hackers or else some how I am culpable for not protecting my information. My head wants to explode and we haven't started talking about the executives who "coincidentally" sold millions of dollars of company stock in the days immediately preceding the public announcement of the hacking.

[Morreion]

There should be severe penalties for not securing 3rd party personal information in a forthright manner. Deliberate laxness in security like Equifax apparently engaged in should result in the company being broken up with proceeds going to a fund for the relief of those impacted negatively by their data being misused. But this is like closing the barn door after the horses have run out at this point.

Years ago my university alma mater was hacked and my personal info stolen. I didn't understand then why they needed such information as my social security number 20 years after graduation. It's pretty clear by now that personal information is bought and sold as a commodity by all sorts of parties. There needs to be a way of opting out of this, and painful penalties for not securing such data.

[Regolyth]

Sept 14, 2017 14:28:11 GMT -5 Morreion said:

It's pretty clear by now that personal information is bought and sold as a commodity by all sorts of parties. There needs to be a way of opting out of this, and painful penalties for not securing such data.

I was listening to Clark Howard (his site is a great guide to financial information of all sorts: Clark.com) and he was talking about how in some countries in Europe, for personal data collection such as this, that if you wanted to opt out of it, you could submit a letter and by law they had to completely erase all information they had on you. If only that was the case for us. Here, they collect this data without our permission and there's nothing we can do to stop it, let alone take it back. Heck, I can't even get calls about my warranty expiring on a vehicle I don't own to stop.

[Morreion]

Clark's a good guy!