Giant Equifax data breach: 143 million people could be affected

[boutons_deux]

BigFinance ing America every minute

And of course the Repugs, "destroyers of the administrative state" and toxic S to BigFinance, will do nothing and block all attempts to regulate.


All the reasons you should be absolutely furious at Equifax—and the entire credit bureau industry

Old Blackbeard himself would have admired the ingenuity of a business set up to

grab sensitive information about citizens without their consent,

conjure property rights over that data by concocting proprietary formulas, and

sell it to the highest bidder. So much the better if private information falls into the hands of criminals—

companies can sell protection services to the same hapless citizens.

Indeed, credit bureaus are designed to take you coming and going.

Their reports, often based on suspect and opaque data-mining techniques, are

riddled with falsehoods that can rob consumers of favorable loans.

Yet the

companies have mostly succeeded in escaping liability for these errors.

Even worse, they can handily

profit from these same errors by charging for monitoring services and credit freezes.

Anyone who has tried to get a correction to a credit report knows that the process is slow and onerous. And

if you do have the time to dispute an error on your report,

it can actually negatively affect your credit score until the dispute is resolved.

The oligopolistic “Big Three” credit bureaus—TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax—

exist to reap billions in profit from your personal information and

make it easy for lenders to charge you the highest possible interest rates.

Their

use of your data could result in the loss of a potential home or a job.

Yet when they screw up, they have little more to fear than a negligible fine.

https://qz.com/1079490/the-equifax-b...eid=47e367557b

America is ed and un able, and the oligarchy/Repug s are ing Americans deeper and harder every day.

Same type of corruption by the bond ratings agencies, as we saw in the Banksters' Great Depression, they are s to BigFinance, paid to falsify BigFinance's "deals" as AAA.

[boutons_deux]

As Equifax Amassed Ever More Data, Safety Was a Sales Pitch

Equifax’s chief executive had a simple strategy when he joined more than a decade ago: Gather as much personal data as possible and find new ways to sell it.

The company was making good money compiling credit reports on Americans. But Wall Street wanted stronger growth.

The chief executive, Richard F. Smith, delivered, releasing dozens of new products each year and doubling revenue.

The company built algorithms and started scrubbing social media to assess consumers. In a big data collection coup,

Equifax persuaded more than 7,000 employers to hand over salary details for an income verification system that now encompasses nearly half of American workers.

As part of its pitch to clients, the company promised to safeguard information.

It even sold products to help companies hit by cyberattacks protect their customers.

“Data breaches are on the rise. Be prepared,” the company said in one pitch. “You’ll feel safer with Equifax.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/b...ta-breach.html

[spurraider21]

This "data breech" really stinks of Lifelock tbh. What do these companies do when they get breeched? They buy Lifelock for everyone involved for one year, then Lifelock tries to up sell you and they act like you're going into the DMZ if you don't renew.

As if these monitoring companies have trustworthy employees, the only trustworthy employees in the world, and they cannot be hacked.

Seems like circular reasoning, a scam.

yes and antivirus companies send out viruses

and big pharma is planting diseases in our water supply

etc, etc

[DMC]

yes and antivirus companies send out viruses

and big pharma is planting diseases in our water supply

etc, etc

they you in the drive through

[Spurminator]

IRS awards multimillion-dollar fraud-prevention contract to Equifax
The no-bid contract was issued last week, as the company continued facing fallout from its massive security breach.


http://www.politico.com/story/2017/1...ontract-243419

[ducks]

is not the head guy on irs some liberal

[spurraider21]

is not the head guy on irs some liberal

*ding*

[boutons_deux]

How Equifax Breach Could Cost US Consumers $4.1 Billion

to place a freeze on their credit report. Depending on which state you live in, that can range in cost from zero to $10, and a request to “unfreeze” or “thaw” the report may cost a similar amount.

Only four states — Indiana, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina — require the firms to provide both freezes and “thaws” at no charge to consumers. Four other states — Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey, New York — require the firms to provide freezes at no charge but allow them to charge for thawing the freeze either temporarily or permanently. Victims of iden y theft get free freezes and thaws in every state, and many states waive or reduce fees for certain categories of consumers.

If all 148 million consumers in the other 42 states and the District of Columbia ordered a credit freeze today, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion (NYSE: TRU), the three major U.S. credit reporting companies, would rack up $4.1 billion in revenues, according to researchers at U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG).

The fees the firms charge vary by state. In Texas, for example, a freeze costs $10 at Experian and TransUnion and $10.83 at Equifax (includes tax). Temporary or permanent thaws cost the same. To get the best protection from misuse of the data stolen from Equifax, consumers are urged to freeze their credit reports at all three firms. That will cost Texans $30.83.

USPIRG calculates that fees to freeze all records for all Texans would dump $509 million into the revenue stream of the three firms. An interactive map at the USPIRG website gives the fees in all 50 states.

http://247wallst.com/banking-finance...F7+Wall+St.%29

BigFinance ALWAYS wins, ALWAYS defrauding, fleecing citizens.

[monosylab1k]

[ElNono]

lol here's a longer video.

[boutons_deux]

Equifax Was Warned

The researcher's findings, in other words, showed there were multiple ways into Equifax's networks. Months later, the hackers, who stole the records of 145.5 million Americans and 700,000 Brits, exploited more than 30 different servers, according to Bloomberg. Considering all the bugs and vulnerabilities they identified, the

anonymous security researcher is convinced Equifax wasn't just hacked by one group of attackers.
"If it took me three hours to find that website, I definitely think I'm not the only one who found it," they said.

"It wasn't just one breach. It was maybe dozens."

many in the information security world say Equifax didn't do enough to keep our data safe.

That opinion is also held by many former Equifax employees, who told me the company didn't take security seriously enough.

Motherboard spoke to 14 former Equifax employees

While there was no consensus, the majority of former employees, some of whom worked in the security team or alongside it, said a

breach like this was inevitable.
"The degree of risk [Equifax] assumes is found, by most of the IT staff who worked elsewhere, to be preposterous,"

Equifax hired Deloitte last year to do a security audit. The audit found several problems, including a careless approach to patching systems, according to the former employee.

"Nobody took that security audit seriously,"

the former cybersecurity team employee told me.

"Every time there was a discussion about doing something, we had a tough time to get management to understand what we were even asking."

Equifax brings in security consultants regularly.

One year, according to the former employee who worked in IT, he and his team found that

someone had programmed files to be inappropriately wiped on multiple servers—an act of internal sabotage, he said.

But the team had no way of discovering who did it—there were no activity logs or ways to track who had set up the script.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/a...term=Read+more

[boutons_deux]

Equifax hack worse than previously thought: Biz kissed goodbye to card expiry dates, tax IDs etc

The outfit already said cyber-crooks "primarily" took

names,

social security numbers,

birth dates,

home addresses,

credit-score dispute forms, and, in some instances,

credit card numbers and driver license numbers.

Now the credit-checking giant reckons the intruders snatched even more information from its databases.

According to do ents provided by Equifax to the US Senate Banking Committee, and revealed this month by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the attackers

also grabbed

taxpayer identification numbers,

phone numbers,

email addresses, and

credit card expiry dates belonging to some Equifax customers.

Like social security numbers, taxpayer ID numbers are useful for fraudsters seeking to steal people's iden ies or their tax rebates, and

the expiry dates are similarly useful for online crooks when linked with credit card numbers and other personal information.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/0...ty_breach_bad/

==========

Hack Will Lead to Little, if Any, Punishment for Equifax

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/b...penalties.html