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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.
All the details needed are currently available on pastebin for your convinience.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think in a modern economy you ultimately need credit reporting to lower the transaction cost of lending and to make risk estimation as efficient as possible.
But I do think credit data should be locked by default, and only unlocked by consumers at the time they actually want to borrow money. This should go along with more stringent proof-of-data standards to avoid false information to be reported and with whom and how the information can be shared.
In my opinion, the larger systemic problem with "open" credit reports is that it encourages consumers to engage in excess consumption and excess borrowing through a relentless marketing of credit opportunities.
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?
They just gave up enough information to recreate everyone's identity.
If they're going to make it EASY to lock AND UNLOCK your credit... does anyone else see the problem here?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Credit and debit card info is already protected by law in the U.S. A merchant cannot give or sell it to someone else. They can't even keep a copy of it legally.
Unless you agree to let them. That little checkbox that says "save my credit card info for future purchases"? That's not just for your convenience. That's what grants the merchant permission to store you credit card info in their database.
This right here is the problem with your approach. The info the credit bureaus collect wasn't disclosed by you. It was disclosed to them by the other party in the transaction - the people and companies you did business with. If you paid a bill late, the person (e.g. landlord) or company (e.g. the power utility) reported that to one or more credit bureaus. Likewise if your credit card has a $10k credit limit and use $2k of it on average and you pay it off on time each month, the credit card company reports that to the credit bureaus. So while the info is about you, it's not provided by you. It's provided by others that you interact with financially. Your credit report is basically a collation of Yelp ratings on you by everyone you've interacted with financially.
So why not pass a law prohibiting others from reporting your financial behavior to the credit bureaus? We could, but it won't have the effect most people seem to think it will. There's so much hatred for the credit bureaus, that most people don't understand that the only thing the credit bureaus can do is help you. If you have no credit, that's the same thing as having bad credit. Lenders have to assume the worst case scenario to protect their finances. (The exception is when you're in college - then it's known that you're just starting out and have a good reason for having no credit history, so the eventual credit for college students is slightly better than the average adult.) How willing are you to try out a restaurant with no Yelp reviews? You probably wouldn't risk taking a first date there or holding a family reunion there - you'd minimize the risk by trying it out first alone or with a few friends. Likewise, if a lender knows nothing about you, they're going to assume the worst - that you're highly unlikely to pay back any money they lend you, and charge you a high interest rate accordingly.
Unless a credit bureau vouches for you and reports that you're good about paying your bills, and are low risk. When a lender sees that, they're more willing to lend you money and will charge you a lower interest rate for it because they are confident you are low risk. In other words, the normal state isn't easy loans and the credit bureaus making your life hell when you have poor credit. That hell state is the normal state, and the credit bureaus make your life easier when they say you have good credit.
Prohibiting people and businesses from reporting this info about you to the credit bureaus will make it on average harder and more expensive for you to borrow money, not easier. Which gets us back to that little checkbox for storing your credit card info. Every loan you take out, every credit card you own, every lease you sign, every service you sign up for with a monthly bill will have a similar checkbox requesting you give them permission to report your financial behavior to the credit bureaus. Fail to check that box and you'll just consign yourself to the worst possible credit rating,
I disagree with the "all you can do now" comment. The information is out there now, but the safeguards that you are purposing should be enabled by default. Anytime you apply for credit, it should be inconvenient as possible to ensure that it can not be abused. Otherwise, just live within your means. When an industry (identity theft in the $billions) is created expressly from stealing information, either invalidate the information or make it more difficult to utilize it.
Either way, a vulnerability has been exposed that now put the entire working class of a country in a very bad situation. Me personally, chose to invalidate the means to utilize the information that they obtained and I refuse to use anything that requires it. Is it inconvenient? Sure. But ask your self, do you want to perpetuate the problem? Credit monitoring should not be an expense put onto the consumer, that should be the express liability of the company that is accumulating and utilizing your data.
If Equifax really wants to address the problem, they should purchase a company like LifeLock © and adopt it as standard operating procedure.
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
still exist?
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.
So before the leak, I didn't feel the need to lock and unlock my credit with such diligence. Each change sometimes requires a certified letter or some other cost not collected as a fee. Now they will offer those changes without a fee (but not compensating me for my cost to make changes) and I'm still expected to pay fees and similar costs for that same service to Transunion and Experian. This is a much worse state and a feeless credit lock at Equifax does little to remedy. We need an overhaul of the system in the US.
The only alternative where companies don't have to hire private detectives in order to give you credit would be for the government to provide an easy way for lenders to check public records to see if people have gone bankrupt or have been sued for failure to pay a debt.
That theoretically might be better as there would have to be due process around what information is provided to prospective lenders, but it could also be even worse than the current system because the government is usually less accountable for its own mistakes due to sovereign immunity.
Besides reporting people's bad debts the other service that these central services provide is a way for lenders to see how much outstanding loans a person has taken out which is a warning to lenders not to lend additional money... again this could be a service the government provides as all loans might have to be registered with the government for them to be valid... as mortgages currently are.
But I think the current system (plus better execution) is probably about as good as it gets. I would like the government to continue policing the credit services and do a better job at it and the courts continuing to arbitrate disputes rather than the government managing the system itself.
Overall though you still need centralized credit reporting otherwise you can't have trade and transactions which involve debt... and that would undermine a lot of people's ability to buy more costly things and the ability to sell more costly things... setting us back to the days of "layaway" where people could lock in a sale price of something and make payments and then receive what they purchased after they had paid off the balance. Basically it would be a big negative to the current economy to reduce the role of credit.
Like it or not, we have a debt based economy.
I do not know about your debit card, but mine is my bank issued Visa card (e.g. no fee). So as to consumer protection...... the same.
Technically the protections are the same for a credit and debit card. The difference the GP points out, and he/she is correct, is that you can dispute a fraudulent CC transaction *before* you actually pay that bill whereas with a debit card the money is already gone from your account and you must request that it be returned. These are not the same thing. In addition, (a) you get a float on your money with a CC and (b) a credit card influences your credit history - which is a good thing, if you pay it off - while a debt card does not.
If you have a no-fee CC and pay it off every month, there's absolutely no reason to have/use a debit card.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Very much this. They're grasping at straws.
What I actually want is a lock to prevent Equifax from ever handling my information again.
Why would I want to be able to dispute a charge? If I am making the transaction, it's not fraud. If I'm buying something like groceries, or a new shirt, there is exactly zero chance that I'm going to involve a credit card company in any dissatisfaction I may have.
Right, so there's exactly zero chance that a retailer is going to make a mistake in their advantage and then refuse to fix it?
You are correct, however, that is usually just a hold on the amount until reconciliation can be done and in most cases that is not instantaneous. You can still reverse the transaction either way. I have done so many times. Yes, with a debit card after the 24 hours, the money is gone and you have to wait for it to be returned.