From:
The Week (US)  29 Sep 2017  Farhad Manjoo New York Times

Equifax had “just one job,” and still dropped the ball spectacularly, said Farhad Manjoo. As one of the three main credit agencies, its “only purpose” is to gather and protect millions of Americans’ most private financial data. Yet over the course of two months this spring, hackers were able to penetrate Equifax’s “spectral gauze of security” and walk away with Social Security numbers, birthdates, and more for 143 million people.

“So, Equifax, I have to ask: Now that you have failed at your one job, why should you be allowed to keep doing it?” If a bank lost everyone’s money, it would be shut down. If a bookkeeper couldn’t keep track of profits and losses, he’d lose all his clients.

Yet “no one is really in a position to stop Equifax from continuing to do business as usual.” There’s no real mechanism in public policy, outside of fines, to penalize a company that fails to protect our data. Regulators won’t exact a more “existential punishment,” because Equifax is deemed too important to the financial system.

“But wait, it gets worse: You also can’t prevent Equifax from getting any more of your data.” It’s nearly impossible for consumers to prevent their data from being shared with the firm, and that’s not going to change. “Not every data hack deserves a corporate death penalty,” but this is one breach no company should get away with.

Cliff Daniels
Realtor
Active Properties
Boulder Colorado
720 434 1418
cliff@actprop.com