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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.
Oh wow, Free!
How can I immediately hand over any more data to Equifax?
This is why we need multi-factor-multi-signature operations. If I have PART of the key required to read/write my own personal data then there's a good chance any stolen data is useless.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I guess this is an attempt to head off legislation mandating free credit locks and unlocks (among other things). They already offer this for a fee, so I'm wondering why it's going to take them 4 months to lower the price to $0. Sure, it'll take some time to reengineer the site to no longer go through the checkout/charging process, but they could keep that process and lower the price to $1 (or less) within minutes, probably just a database field change. Is it really safe to wait 4 months for it to go free? I have a feeling the people who would lock their credit, will pay the ~$10 to do it now rather than risk keeping it unlocked 4 more months, suggesting this 4 month wait is artificial to make it seem like they're doing something while still profiting from their own incompetence.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Come on! How many attempts from Equifax will we see to bring the situation to their advantage.
-we fired the bad girl first, but then we fired the bad guy also, after we realized this was too big.
-now, we'll give freebees to everybody!
Wait in five years when nobody remembers or forgot to read the fine prints. Instead, they should be held accountable for any damage any consumer might have suffer from because of the breach.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
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. The reason that Equifax and Experian and all the other credit-reference agencies "get away" with what they do is simply that the terms and conditions - which we are essentially forced to accept if we want a credit/debit card, mortgage, loan or other financial service - are written to allow the creditor to do exactly that. The creditor writes the terms and conditions that way ostensibly to have the ability to cross-check our credit history and so protect themselves from bad debt and from financial crime. Except, as we know, this is now being completely abused.
Governments turn a blind eye to this practice because their elected officials are on the receiving end of so much lobbying money from the companies that do this, it is easy for the industry to "buy off" potentially opposing votes from all parties until the industry can propose a change to laws and buy the result that they want. Unfortunately, this creates a situation in which the government is acting against the best interests of the majority of people that elected them.
I have no problem with a law being passed that legally requires me to declare all pertinent parts of my credit history if I want a loan or a credit card or a bank account. I have no problem with a law that allows for certain forms of credit history - for example, people being declared bankrupt, or having court judgements against them - being "on the record" and visible to lenders.
Where I *do* have a problem is in the use, sale and profit from my personal information, in a manner that is not compatible with the purpose for which I originally agreed to disclose that information, without my knowledge and/or consent.
That is plainly an unacceptable level of scope creep.
Rather than simply push to see Equifax ditch a few of their senior officers, we need to be pushing to have the entire credit-checking, data-sharing-for-profit industry declared illegal and to have these parasitic outfits shut down permanently. All they do is increase the amount of junk mail that comes through my door offering me new credit cards.
No thanks.
Stopping to use credit cards is not sound advice as it will put you at a disadvantage for large purchases such as a car or a house. Get a card with a reputable banking company, use it for everything, and pay it off in full every month. If you need extra for unexpected expenses or major scheduled repairs get a small loan from the local credit union, they tend to have the lowest interest rates.Not using credit cards will make your FICO score drop because there is nothing to calculate creditworthiness on.
I think the erroneous credit information data is a large problem that doesn't get enough attention.
The customers of credit agencies are lenders, not consumers, and this means that credit agencies have an incentive to report the highest marginal risk of any potential borrower. The utility value to lenders of a credit report is a loan made at the highest possible risk premium, enabling a profitable loan portfolio.
When credit agencies report a potential borrower as a higher risk than they actually are because of erroneous information, the lender gets to charge a higher risk premium -- interest rate -- than the actuarial risk represented by their true borrowing history. This makes the lenders more profitable, basically able to justify an added borrowing cost.
You would think that competition among lenders would mitigate this, with some lenders using the gap between higher reported risk and actuarial risk to charge lower interest rates. But they have no incentive to do this, accurately estimating the nominal and actual risk requires a lot of estimation (and some risk) cost and since nearly all their competitors will use the same credit agency risk data, the will end up charging the same risk premium. Lending thus becomes a price-fixing cartel, with the price fixing to consumers coordinated by a third party, the credit agency.
At the end of the day, the credit agencies have a incentive to leave junk data in credit histories because it allows lenders to inflate risk premiums and thus profits. This goes a long way to explaining why they want to include information not related to borrower repayment history in credit reports (driving records, divorce records, social media information, etc). They want to add extra negative drag on credit scores to raise borrowing costs to consumers and thus further boost their customers', the lenders, profits.
There should be much more stringent rules on removing bad data in credit reports. Credit agencies should have 30 days (or less) to provide material proof of bad credit data or it should be automatically removed. Failure to comply should be a $500 per false data item penalty. Credit reports should only contain borrowing information. Past loan repayment history should be the only gauge of lending risk.
Using a debit card for anything other than when you want to withdraw cash is stupid behavior. Don't do it, that is for the uneducated and poor people who can't get a credit limit high enough to get them thru a month!
You have vastly better consumer protection in terms of being able to dispute charges using a CC, rather than a debit. If you pay the entire bill every month there is no interest cost. Even most no-fee cards now offer some kind of points or cash back rewards. Often that can go as high as %2 on a no-fee card! Seriously doing any purchasing you possibly can your CC can mean a nice little payday!
Also keep in mind you are not just leaving money on the table not doing this, you are actually having your pocket picked. Retailers all pay merchant fees to the card processors and issuing banks. That is where those rewards payouts come from; they pass those fees right on back to the customers in terms of higher prices. So effectively anyone not doing CC purchases or using a CC that offers inferior rewards are subsidizing the payouts to everyone else. So your really should take advantage, if only to not be taken advantage of yourself. Yes its stupid and unfair system, and if at some point everyone catches on it would actually stop working and probably come to an end. Do you are part to make it a better world, in this case all you have to do is claim your free money.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You travel in odd circles then. Or perhaps just young circles. Responsible use of credit cards provides more safety to your financial health. It's like a financial condom for your money.