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Equifax Releases Credit Locking App That Doesn't Work (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, the beleaguered credit reporting agency Equifax launched a new service to protect people from the risks of identity theft that the company vastly magnified with a breach of over 145 million people's credit records last year. The service, called Lock & Alert, is fronted by a mobile application and a Web application. It is intended to allow individuals to control access to their credit report on demand. "Lock & Alert allows You to lock and unlock your EIS credit report ('Equifax credit report')," the services' terms of service agreement states. "Locking or unlocking your Equifax credit report usually takes less than a minute." Except when it doesn't.
As Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber of the New York Times reported, the new service -- which is different from a "freeze" in some ways that are not clear from a legal and regulatory standpoint -- has not been working for some (and possibly all) mobile app users. The idea of the "lock" is that it can be undone in an instant with a swipe of the screen, without incurring a charge to freeze or unfreeze the report or having to provide a PIN number. But attempts by Siegel Bernard to lock her husband's credit report resulted in application timeouts.
As Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber of the New York Times reported, the new service -- which is different from a "freeze" in some ways that are not clear from a legal and regulatory standpoint -- has not been working for some (and possibly all) mobile app users. The idea of the "lock" is that it can be undone in an instant with a swipe of the screen, without incurring a charge to freeze or unfreeze the report or having to provide a PIN number. But attempts by Siegel Bernard to lock her husband's credit report resulted in application timeouts.
Seriously, how is this joke of a company still allowed to do business? An example should have been made, and considering how redundant they are (at least 4 other credit reporting companies I know of), they should be made an example to ensure the others get their act together.
What's really sad is that they're in a perfect position to provide identity verification given all the data they have on, well everyone. They could easily provide it as a free service to users and charge businesses a fee to confirm someone's identity. Imagine having to provide a pin and one of your five Yubikeys (or similar) when you bought a car, house, credit card, etc.
With their utter incompetence no sane person would trust them with such a task. Alas, Google will do it instead and that doesn't really make me feel much better.
You (the consumer) are not their customer. Their customers are banks, mortgage lenders, credit card companies, and other entities that loan you money, or let you buy on credit.
It is not in Equifax's interests for you to freeze your credit. A frozen account is a customer account that cannot be monetized (e.g. by being sold to banks who want to push their credit card on you). So of course Equifax will try to convince you that their "freeze that is not really a freeze" app works. But the thing is, they don't want it to work. If it works, they lose money. So of course it will fail, and you will be the one holding the bag when you are targeted by credit thieves.
Don't screw around with Equifax. Freeze your credit report, and be done with it (and them).
It's data Equifax has collected from lenders and companies you did business with in the past. Should a restaurant be allowed to freeze Yelp, preventing the site from from publicizing reviews visitors have posted of that restaurant?
No, but Yelp doesn't publicly list the investors, current account balances and outstanding debts, or play a large part in whether or not they will be able to receive a small business loan. Also, Yelp hasn't exactly had a massive, high profile data breach that put millions of restaurants at risk of identity theft.
In the former case, Equifax is taking "reviews" of you that companies have given it, and sharing them with other companies. You are not the customer. You are a third party to the transaction, even though the reviews are about you.
Yelp is having issues of its own, but at least the information disclosed on the site is either publicly listed (business name and address, etc.), or individual anecdotes. My SSN isn't considered pubic information, but Equifax has it. If they got it from a company I do business with, they did so without my consent.
In the latter case, Yelp is taking reviews of the restaurant that visitors have given it, and sharing them with other visitors. The restaurant is not the customer. It is a third party to the transaction, even though the reviews are about it.
Businesses can post individual replies to dissatisfied customers on Yelp, and can do so for free, and future customers will see both. Resolving a credit dispute with Equifax requires hundreds of dollars (at least), massive amounts of paperwork, and if Equifax says "the event stands", it's not like American Express is going to take my dispute into account in the same way a good response to a bad review is ultimately left up to the customer to determine.
I agree with the other posters - Equifax should be legally compelled to comply with an individual's request to have their information deleted. If I only trust TransUnion, I should be able to choose to only let them have it. If a bank wants to take the fact that I have opted out of Equifax into account when I apply for a loan, they should either be able to charge me a premium to use TransUnion's credit report on me, or deny the loan entirely, at which point I go to another bank, rinse and repeat until either I find a bank that takes my preferred credit bureau or I cave and let Equifax start collecting data again. That is how the free market is supposed to work, but defending Equifax's use of information without recourse is far from a desirable situation for consumers and evidence that the industry is not self policing.