As long as there are practically no penalties this will keep happening. Forty-four percent of Americans are affected in this.
Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
491–500 of 551 posts
Re: Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
That distinction holds up only if real Alice isn't inconvenienced in any way.
She would be inconvenienced, but that doesn't mean she was slandered. If someone steals Alice's car and commits a hit-and-run, she will be inconvenienced when the cops show up at her door, but the person who reports her plates won't be committing slander.
But if a newspaper reported that Alice was a murderer because her stolen car was involved in a hit and run, that would be libelous.
Re: Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. In the UK we have a National Insurance number, but it's stated over and over again that: This is not proof of identity . Anywhere it is referenced it is repeated that it should not be used as proof of identity and not given to anyone as such. SSNs should be treated the same way, but that would require a culture change. Perhaps having 150m of them 'leaked' will bring about that change. Such a change could als…
The problem is that you need a replacement, something that can actually be used as a solid proof of identity. The countries that don't have comparable identity theft problems have done so mostly by using an ubiquitous government issued ID that's hard to forge and hard to obtain by someone claiming to be you. In USA there seems to be a strong opposition and a legal barrier for the government to make such an ID. Not mu…
All the objections to creating national ID seem like ridiculous anachronisms given every other privacy-compromising measure that's been shoved down our throats.
Re: Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
#494I strongly encourage anyone in the US to put a full credit security freeze on all three credit agencies. When a credit freeze is in place, you still have access to all of your existing loan accounts and whatnot (e.g. credit cards), but lenders cannot access your credit to open new accounts unless you want them to. It's not difficult nor expensive to do, and the freeze lasts until you decide to revoke it. Whenever you…
I did this about 8 years ago, and have only needed to temporally unfreeze it 3 times. Besides the big 3, I also froze reporting from Innovis. The only unforeseen hangup from frozen credit reporting I've run into is with car rentals. With a few exceptions, most car rental companies (at least in the US) run your credit. Everything else was pretty predictable.
Do they refuse you rental?
Here in UK they verify address via utility bills, cross-check with drivers license (verified by gov agency, DVLA). They maybe only take card payments too, no cash?
I'd expect that to be enough, given they force you to take out expensive insurance, that must cover them, surely. What's the credit report going to get them at that point?
(It may be even stricter now, don't know.)
Re: Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is not proof of identity. What is it then? I've seen it used as a quasi-password by car hire companies to access driving license history.
>What is it then? It is the username you are issued by the government. It is solely used to identify you.
In practice it is not solely used for that.
Re: Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
She would be inconvenienced, but that doesn't mean she was slandered. If someone steals Alice's car and commits a hit-and-run, she will be inconvenienced when the cops show up at her door, but the person who reports her plates won't be committing slander.
But if a newspaper reported that Alice was a murderer because her stolen car was involved in a hit and run, that would be libelous.
If they said they had received word that the car was registered to Alice, that wouldn't be libelous. If they said she was the driver, that would be libelous. If she was charged with murder and they said she was an alleged murderer, that wouldn't be libelous.
Re: Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked a bit in the industry and around the industry, the worrying thing for me is that it doesn't seem to be working for anyone apart from equifax/experian/call credit. I have separately worked with one of those companies with a client and their IT staff were utterly incompetent (I won't say which). Loads of different sites, lots of little fiefdoms, utterly inconsistent security policies on each site, blaming e…
You just put the money in an account, pay the capital off every month, lose a little bit of interest and in 2 years you have a shiny credit rating even though it means zilch. I don’t really get that - doesn’t it mean that the person who took a loan is relatively responsible and was able to pay their loan back on time? Any system can be gamed, but I don’t get the impression that credit agencies are attempting to elimi…
> I don’t really get that - doesn’t it mean that the person who took a loan is relatively responsible and was able to pay their loan back on time?
That's probably the reason why it would increase one's credit rating in a positive way. I have no doubts about these systems being broken in such a way that they consider people who take on credit, paying it back in time, as more "credit-worthy" than people who never needed/wanted to take up a loan.
A bank obviously wouldn't want to miss out on the first group of people, why they couldn't care less about the second group of people from which they make no money in the form of interest.
It's also interesting how these kinds of rating systems seem to be "broken" all over the world. In Germany there is "Schufa", which is not a bank but basically a private company with a de-facto monopoly position in regards to credit ratings in Germany and they are quite infamous for mixing up people and thus giving them a negative rating, often without the people noticing until it's too late and their negative credit check denied them access to a rented flat/credit whatever, after which it's their responsibility to get in touch with Schufa to clear up their misidentification.
Re: Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
#498I find the section about the arse-covering website amusing in the way they cannot help but give it a stupid marketing speak name, and phrase it like it's some fantastic product they are providing rather than a desperate response to an existential threat!
Re: Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
Precisely. In no way was Alice's identity stolen - that's tautologically impossible. Rather, the bank was defrauded by the criminal - Alice is of not a party to whether or not the bank recovers from its own loss. Alice's ownership is entirely unaffected, though the bank's internal processes might not reflect that - again, their problem, not Alice's. Further - this rat race, where I have to give ever more intimate det…
All financial companies are required to have you SSN for reporting income for taxes and also report money movement under the anti-money laundering laws(AML). Know your customer(KYC) requires a financial company to gather documentation and information to verify your identity and to ensure your not on any list of people we're legally not allowed to provide services eg terrorist watch list. You don't need to provide a S…
> You don't need to provide a SSN to get cell service or provide real information. Lots fraud is done through tethering through burner phones.
Don't give them any stupid ideas. This year Germany did exactly that: Require proper identification for purchased SIM cards. Lot's of people used that opportunity for some extra cash by selling pre-activated SIM's through Ebay, after the requirements had been changed.
Too bad they also introduced Euro roaming, so people are still free to buy their anonymous SIM's in other EU countries and use them in Germany.
I guess those are the consequences of a future where your mobile device is used for your personal authentication everywhere by everybody. [0]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/business/dealbook/banks-l...
Re: Cybersecurity Incident Involving Consumer Information
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americans don't like National ID cards because we remember the Third Reich and the USSR.
I'm not sure I would proclaim that unironically in a discussion of a giant American company accidentally losing track of a database containing detailed personal information about ~1/2 the country. I mean sure, it's not in your pocket. But are you going to move house in response to this breach?
The point is that your social is a fairly predictable number if you can figure out someone's birthday and hometown. I realize this wouldn't help in the case of equifax but it would help in other instances. It would also allow us to have voter ID laws that didn't constitute a poll fav but that's a totally unrelated issue.