It's time for the USA to adopt EU-style GDPR protections, by constitutional amendment if necessary.
Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
261–270 of 670 posts
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Even the ones who do have their identities stolen will likely be made whole by the credit card companies." Fraudulent charges on a credit card are the least of my concerns. This opens us up to a lifetime of identity theft and insecure accounts of every sort. I'm not even sure how they can approach remedying the problem. Coordinate with the SSA to get 150 million people new SSNs at the least.
Why would people need new SSNs? It was the credit industry that misused them as combination of unique identifier and authenticator, and that is not the SSA's responsibility to fix. The government even tried to curb misuse of the SSN, but it was not binding on private entities, and they just ignored it. The solution, whatever it is, does not include anyone continuing to pretend that the SSN is now or has ever been sui…
> other than for tracking government benefits managed by the SSA, and possibly also for tax filings with the IRS
... and all of the other government benefits, programs, or mandated activities, many (all?) of which demand your SSN. Are you even sure that the credit industry, i.e. banks, originally misused SSNs? I wouldn't be surprised if they were required, by the government, to use them, precisely because it is the closest thing to an official "unique identifier".
Some people also might be concerned with not receiving their SS benefits either, which isn't entirely far-fetched given that others might now be using it for nefarious purposes (like trying to collect their SS benefits).
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#263So let me get this right, this company collects credit information and someone hacked into their web server and stole highly sensitive information about most of the adult american population. Then the executives sold their stock a day before they announced the hack to the public. Besides the troubling fact that you still use social security and credit card numbers as any form of reliable authentication, how aren't th…
No amount of governmental regulations can solve the current date breach trends. Even government's own intel agencies got hacked too. No organization is immune to data breaches. It's a matter of time and effort. A lot of us here are engineers and coders. It's our responsibility to design better architecture, security conscious protocols and write securer softwares. And it's up to all of us (regardless which country yo…
Sure, in a fantasy land. If you where to hold the management criminally responsible for their lack of investment in IT, security etc you might see increased investment.
The very fact that all this data was accessed from their public site is very troubling. What's the chances this is a basic SQL injection issue? What's the chances they didn't invest in security at all?
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
No amount of governmental regulations can solve the current date breach trends. Even government's own intel agencies got hacked too. No organization is immune to data breaches. It's a matter of time and effort. A lot of us here are engineers and coders. It's our responsibility to design better architecture, security conscious protocols and write securer softwares. And it's up to all of us (regardless which country yo…
Sure, in a fantasy land. If you where to hold the management criminally responsible for their lack of investment in IT, security etc you might see increased investment. The very fact that all this data was accessed from their public site is very troubling. What's the chances this is a basic SQL injection issue? What's the chances they didn't invest in security at all?
High. And they won't be the only agency. I guarantee you we'll hear from the other 2 in the next month or so. Because people aren't held criminally responsible for the security of user data, so why give a shit?
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ideal way to recompensate $500 or $1000 dollars is to sign up everyone for credit/id theft protection, for say, 5 years. I don't know where else they get their revenue from, but free credit protection will hurt them significantly in the long run.
I've heard that those credit monitoring plans are a joke, and provide very little value besides the simulation of "doing something."
Lifelock themselves were subject of a data breach in 2015.
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
No amount of governmental regulations can solve the current date breach trends. Even government's own intel agencies got hacked too. No organization is immune to data breaches. It's a matter of time and effort. A lot of us here are engineers and coders. It's our responsibility to design better architecture, security conscious protocols and write securer softwares. And it's up to all of us (regardless which country yo…
Sure, in a fantasy land. If you where to hold the management criminally responsible for their lack of investment in IT, security etc you might see increased investment. The very fact that all this data was accessed from their public site is very troubling. What's the chances this is a basic SQL injection issue? What's the chances they didn't invest in security at all?
My guess is they paid an 3rd party bs service to "scan" their site for vulnerabilities.
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
This class action will likely be settled in the same way the Ticketmaster case was settled ... with a coupon book good for 2 free credit reports.
Probably for good reason. $500 per class member is an insanely high damages estimate. 99.9% of people will suffer zero damages because their identities will not be stolen. Even the ones who do have their identities stolen will likely be made whole by the credit card companies. The real damages here are going to be to the banks and credit card companies that will have to absorb the costs of all the fraud. As to the Ti…
If there are 140 million members then any settlement will be individually quite modest (Equifax has annual income of ~600 million dollars, so multiple years of all of it to get to even $10).
It does seem like any penalty for something like this should severely impact the ability of the company to operate though.
I suppose a $0 way to penalize them severely would be to force Equifax to allow individuals to opt out of having Equifax store information about them. Lots of people would do so without understanding that it might impact their ability to get a loan, but so what.
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#268So let me get this right, this company collects credit information and someone hacked into their web server and stole highly sensitive information about most of the adult american population. Then the executives sold their stock a day before they announced the hack to the public. Besides the troubling fact that you still use social security and credit card numbers as any form of reliable authentication, how aren't th…
Don't conflate the free market with zero regulation.
Maybe not but in every free market argument I've seen, the regulations that free market purists are willing to acknowledge are hazy at best, most likely because they will never need to be implemented because such a system will never exist. Even if it did, it would eventually evolve back into our current system (I think), because I think thats how our current system evolved in the first place.
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
No amount of governmental regulations can solve the current date breach trends. Even government's own intel agencies got hacked too. No organization is immune to data breaches. It's a matter of time and effort. A lot of us here are engineers and coders. It's our responsibility to design better architecture, security conscious protocols and write securer softwares. And it's up to all of us (regardless which country yo…
Sure, in a fantasy land. If you where to hold the management criminally responsible for their lack of investment in IT, security etc you might see increased investment. The very fact that all this data was accessed from their public site is very troubling. What's the chances this is a basic SQL injection issue? What's the chances they didn't invest in security at all?
> If you where (sic) to hold the management criminally responsible for their lack of investment in IT, security etc you might see increased investment.
What makes you think lack of investment in IT & security is the main reason they get hacked?
Vice versa, NSA has virtually unlimited (let's just say unlimited means tens of billion dollars) budget invested in IT and security. They have the top resources there too. Do they immune from data breaches and being hacked? The answer is a big NO!
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#270So let me get this right, this company collects credit information and someone hacked into their web server and stole highly sensitive information about most of the adult american population. Then the executives sold their stock a day before they announced the hack to the public. Besides the troubling fact that you still use social security and credit card numbers as any form of reliable authentication, how aren't th…
The NY Attorney general is looking into the situation now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/business/equifax.html?rre...