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In a Highly Unusual Move, FTC Confirms It Is Investigating Equifax (reuters.com)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday confirmed it is investigating Equifax's handling of a data breach affecting 143m Americans. "The FTC typically does not comment on ongoing investigations. However, in light of the intense public interest and the potential impact of this matter, I can confirm that FTC staff is investigating the Equifax data breach," said Peter Kaplan, the commission's acting director of public affairs. Washington Post reporter tweeted: "To put a finer point on it, this is really, really unusual -- the FTC hardly ever says anything about ongoing probes."
I think the reason that nothing serious will come of this is because it only really affects personal finances.
Some portion of the affected 143M will be victims of credit fraud and their credit scores will decline as a result. They will then end up paying a risk premium to borrow money, when, in fact, they don't represent the actual level of risk they pay a premium for. It's actually an increased level of profit for lenders.
At the margins, though, I would expect *some* lenders and sellers of financed products to be concerned about this. If a large amount of fraud came out of this, they could suffer writeoffs and potentially reduced sales as already high-risk consumers were pushed out of credit markets. But mostly I would expect the people vulnerable to fraud to be those with credit/identity worth stealing.
Bottom line, consumers pay and some corner of the lending and sales market experiences added friction and a dip in sales.
If you aren't involved in credit application activities, get a credit freeze at all three agencies now. Then they will not provide information. Make things difficult for any fraudster.
You can lift the freeze when you need to.
Caveat: It costs money, but it's currently free at Equifax (the page is sometimes cratered, however).
Good luck everyone. And kudos to LifeLock's cracker department (JK).
How many bankers did jail time under Obama for the financial mess?
The same amount that did under the George W. Bush administration
We'll make great pets
The current Chief Security Officer's LinkedIn page indicates undergraduate and graduate degrees in music composition. Wish I were joking.