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One Year After the Massive Equifax Data Breach, Pretty Much Nothing Has Changed (axios.com)
The Equifax data breach was supposed to change everything about cybersecurity regulation on Capitol Hill. A year ago, Equifax announced that 145.5 million U.S. adults had their social security numbers stolen in an easily preventable breach. If any data breach was going to be able to shock Washington into enacting sweeping privacy reforms, this should have been it. Axios: But that didn't happen: "The initial interest that was implied by congressional actions didn't pan out," said Michelle Richardson, director of the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). What was supposed to happen: After the first of several hearings involving Equifax, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the Judiciary Committee, said it was "long past time" for federal standards for how companies like Equifax secure data.
Data security wasn't the only anticipated reform. Congress appeared poised to create a national breach notification law governing how and how quickly companies must notify anybody whose personal information is stolen in a breach. Currently, to the chagrin of national retailers, those laws vary state to state. Several investigations were supposed to penalize the credit bureau for lax cybersecurity, including failing to patch the vulnerability hackers exploited despite government warnings. What actually happened: The bills petered out. Mick Mulvaney took over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in November and halted the bureau's investigation.
Data security wasn't the only anticipated reform. Congress appeared poised to create a national breach notification law governing how and how quickly companies must notify anybody whose personal information is stolen in a breach. Currently, to the chagrin of national retailers, those laws vary state to state. Several investigations were supposed to penalize the credit bureau for lax cybersecurity, including failing to patch the vulnerability hackers exploited despite government warnings. What actually happened: The bills petered out. Mick Mulvaney took over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in November and halted the bureau's investigation.
I'd say we should appeal to Donald Trump to change this, but he kind of has his hands full.
Seriously, did anyone expect anything to change?
= nothing gets done
Did you really think they were going to crack down on corporations? Impose regulations and fines? Hahaha, my sweet summer child.
It's the same winner, every time. Money.
Make America grate again!
Politically, nothing happened. But a lot of people locked their credit score. I'm sure credit card companies are now asking for more information to prove your identity to open a new card. People's ssn, date of birth, and drivers license can no longer be trusted as a form of identification for anything. I also had so many friends and family ask what they should do, which opened the door for me to introduce them to things like LastPass, Yubikey, and other security.
And when the whole debate about voting machines came up, one word shut most people up: Equifax.
This industry, the idea that credit is something that can be measured and a value of trust and worthiness ascribed to certain goods and services, is fragile.
Equifax is running out of keys and they just dont seem to care. They are running out of the very currency that funds their business model. If you can no longer trust SSN's because every hacker on the planet has them, and you can no longer trust personal information because its been stolen as well, then the value assigned to the majority of your assets (people) is effectively worthless.
and if all you can report in 20 years is the fact that everyone in your database is categorized as credit-unworthy, then you become worthless as a saleable service to your real customers: banks.
Good people go to bed earlier.
well, there is increased efficiency, fewer dangerous jobs, Increased food production and more effective distribution of food and resources, better medicine, and the ability to advance human technology and science at an unheard of pace because we can now co-orlate and model systems on a level unparalleled in human history.
Don't forget, computers don't just mean, the box on the desk, there are a multitude of computers in every vehicle made since the 80's , they are part of CAT scans, MIR, and ultrasound machines. They are used to regulate the electric grid , and disseminate information that otherwise it would take months for an interested person to search and understand.
I'd say computer are a tool, the purpose of a tool is to amplify the effects of human actions. The actions of the humans are either or good or bad, the tool still amplifies them.
Use a hammer to build a house, use a hammer to kill your neighbor over beer, either way , the good or the evil does not exist within the hammer.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Politically, nothing happened.
To the surprise of absolutely no one given the current state of affairs in Washington.
But a lot of people locked their credit score.
So what? That's about the least interesting bit of data Equifax has about you and it does nothing to prevent mass data breaches.
I'm sure credit card companies are now asking for more information to prove your identity to open a new card.
Citation needed.
also had so many friends and family ask what they should do, which opened the door for me to introduce them to things like LastPass, Yubikey, and other security.
So you told them to use an unregulated and unaudited third party single point of failure? Great plan... You do realize that those things would do nothing to prevent a breach at Equifax right?
The headline can be taken two ways ... the identity theft Armageddon didn't happen either. Did it?
The interesting question would be why ... I know I put a fraud alert on my credit bureau accounts (and have kept renewing it), but did most people really do that?
Not talking about what or why you WANT it to change. Why SHOULD they change. No accountabiliy, no reason.
If I would steal cookies as a kid and all my mom would do was moan about ot, I would eat them all and demand more.
A light punishment after the first cookie was enough.
Accountability: it somehow matters.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You're free.
You're equal.
You are tolerated.
Maybe these are not the right things to be hoping for; perhaps we need reality, sanity, and the ability to address glaringly obvious problems instead.
Alternative Right.
is the short answer. Can't let anything inconvenience the corporations, after all.
Free credit freezes are due this month thanks to Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2155/text?format=txt/
The hammer is an inate object, just like an atom bomb. It has no concience, so blaming anything on it to s irrelevant.
The bkaming is more a lingiustic issue. We 'blame' tsunamis for the death of people,
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
There's no incentive, no motive.
Customers are helpless to do anything about it so they just shrug and move on.
Their shit is out there anyway, what with all the other goddam break-ins.
In the spirit of, "too big to fail," Equifax is too big for their breaches.
All your base are belong to us.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
is if Equifax gets hacked yet again, because there's a fresh new Struts weakness that was announced within the last week that was every bit as bad that lead to this breech. I would fine it hilarious if they're getting cleaned out once again even as we post.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
We need to elect politicians who support regulation as a solution. You can't rely on market forces since you're not able to "shop around" for a credit agency. They're assigned to you.
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Of course nothing changed; the politicians, The Rich, they're all already 'protected', they were never in any danger from this, only The Poor, and middle-class working people stood to lose anything -- and our own alleged 'representatives' in our government don't really give a rat's ass about any of us filthy plebians. Politicians are too busy trying to hold on to their power and position, a large part of which is serving corporate interests (whose money got them elected in the first place; thanks so much Citizens United), the rest of which is kowtowing to (you guessed it) The Rich, who likewise funded their campaigns. Meanwhile the rest of us cross our fingers and hope we don't get our bank accounts drained, credit cards maxed out, and identity stolen and ruined forever; I, for one, don't even bother worrying, I have nothing to take, my identity is basically worthless, and there's not a gods-be-damned thing I can do about it all anyway, it's out of my hands, so why make myself sick with worry? I'll be there when Monsieur Guillotine is brought out again, and the people who have shit on us are dealt with, but until then what can we do but try to survive? Also meanwhile, we have to vote for Democrats whether we like it or not, because it's mainly the Republicans who currently hold a majority who are ignoring this shit, and throwing things farther and farther out of balance every month, so regardless of Democrats being just as corrupt, we have to pit them against each other and hope something actually gets done. The alternative is anarchy and chaos, which would complete the descent of the United States from a top-tier first-world country down into a third-world lawless shithole like Libya or Syria or Somalia.
Enjoy your Thursday, everyone!
You are not Equifax's customer, you are their product. (Just like you are facebook and google's product). You are however your credit card companies customer. If there was pressure put on the credit companies not to share information with an insecure entity like Equifax then Equifax would either put some effort into security or go bankrupt. Equifax has to have a near complete picture of everyone's credit score to remain in business. If even a few creditors stopped sharing information with them they would be in big trouble.
Just tell Donald that it's a wall, he'll start pushing for funding.
The last line of the summary says it all: "Mick Mulvaney took over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in November and halted the bureau's investigation."
The current administration is not interested in consumer protection.
They are on the side of business, not consumers.
My credit is fine. Have there been reports of massive fraud that can be traced back to this? What are they doing with it?
I predicted that this won't be a consumer problem. The credit system now has an issue - all of their previously "Secret" data is floating around. As a consumer I don't know what to do or what is happening out there. But if a rash of fraudulent loans start appearing then the credit market will really have a problem.
Just like I have to press "block caller" due to the high level of scam phone calls --- the credit market may need to start doing the same. Then we all have a problem.
Imagine robbing a bank.. you take in, say, $1M. Say you get caught and your punishment is a BIG fine of, say, $200k. You net 800K from the deal, and another bit at the apple in a few years. THAT is how US government deals with corp crime. An insult to people's intilligence.