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Equifax Will Offer Free Credit Locks for Life, New CEO Says (bloomberg.com)
Equifax will debut a new service that will permanently give consumers the ability to lock and unlock their credit for free. From a report: The service will be introduced by Jan. 31, Chief Executive Officer Paulino do Rego Barros Jr. wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday, a day after taking the helm. The company will also extend the sign-up period for TrustedID Premier, the free credit-monitoring service it's offering all U.S. consumers, he said. "The service we are developing will let consumers easily lock and unlock access to their Equifax credit files," Barros wrote. "You will be able to do this at will. It will be reliable, safe and simple. Most significantly, the service will be offered free, for life." Barros was named interim CEO on Tuesday, less than three weeks after Equifax disclosed that hackers accessed sensitive data for 143 million U.S. consumers.
I appreciate that the comments I make here might be more relevant to EU readers than US ones, but I think the principles should be universal.
When I trade with any company, those transactions are confidential between myself and that company. If I *choose* to perform that transaction with a debit or credit card in order to make the transaction easier or more convenient, that is my choice.
However, the Data Protection Act and associated EU data protection laws basically prohibit the use of information, which may have been collected for one purpose [i.e. to transact a sale] from being used for another purpose [i.e. to provide credit reference information] without the expressed, written consent of the data subject.
I don't know every one of the >30 countries of Europe but here in Germany it's already too late by decades. It's not called Equifax but Schufa, but what they do is exactly the same. Schufa was created 1927.
However they are smaller: ~80 million people in Germany and they have datasets for ~66 million people and 5 million businesses. They have 750 employees and have revenues of approx. 150 million euros.
Every form of credit transaction already has this kind of consent here in Europe too, just like have they have it in the US. Have you read your card legalese?
The difference between Europe and the US is: very few things are bought on credit. Europeans don't buy groceries, clothes with credit cards, they use cash. Alternatively they use their EC cards (which grew out of eurocheques: europe wide usable cheques). EC cards draw the money directly from your banking account and is therefore usually not a form of credit: if you don't have enough cash there, the transaction won't get through.
The difference is not between Europe and the US. It's specifically Germany that is quite card-averse. While visiting my friends in DE earlier this year I was amazed how few places accepted VISA. In the next country to the east I paid for my grocery yesterday, my lunch today and even my on-the-go coffee a moment ago with a credit card (even more precisely, with a NFC phone tied to a credit card). Scandinavia is even more card-friendly, you could live a lot of your life not seeing cash at all. In the UK people also use credit cards a lot, although not to that degree. And I have not seen EC cards anywhere but Germany.
but you seem to have missed why Americans prefer credit-cards: In the U.S. your credit rating is needed for loans like for cars & homes
Screw the credit history part. The main reason I use a credit card for *everything* is that you can't easily dispute a debit card transaction. The money has already gone from your account and you have much better consumer protections when using a credit card.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Seven states already entitle you to zero cost credit freezes. This includes Colorado, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and South Carolina. They may be trying to get ahead of state legislation but my guess is that they're going through damage control with regard to their customers (entities that give credit) not with regard to their data (the people with SSNs). After all, if Equifax is the only one of the big three to make it easy and free for credit freezes to be places, lifted, and removed, then the credit granting entities have reason to use Equifax over TU or Experian as it reduces the risks that they are complicit in identity fraud and give credit to people who are never going to repay.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
They are already offering credit freezes for free. I signed up for it two weeks ago and it did not ask for any credit card or other payment information. I'm not sure if they currently charge for unfreezing, though.
What you signed up for two weeks ago was to give up your right to sue Equifax and agreed to binding arbitration. That is all. They were not planning to do anything with respect to credit freeze. Even now they want four months of damage control and get as many people to give up the rights as possible.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What you signed up for two weeks ago was to give up your right to sue Equifax and agreed to binding arbitration. That is all. They were not planning to do anything with respect to credit freeze. Even now they want four months of damage control and get as many people to give up the rights as possible.
I didn't sign up for their credit check service on that shady Equifax Security 2017 website. I actually signed up for a credit freeze and I did so with the other two agencies as well. I used the site below. Equifax Security Freeze