How do we get in on this lawsuit? What are the implications of this hack to an average person and what if anything should they do about it?
Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
581–590 of 670 posts
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
They already have your credit card numbers. Banks report the numbers to them.
I'm amazed these events don't seem to shake the american love for credit cards. Like now you've seen what happens in the extra layers between you and the money, I wish people would go back on the poison pill and maybe switch to debit cards.
Credit cards are great because if someone steals mine and makes fraudulent charges, they're stealing Chase's money, not mine.
(In theory if someone steals money through your debit card you can get it back... in theory. I'd like to avoid ever having to find out how well this works in practice).
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Yet, without our data, they'd have no business Yet, without credit rating agencies, you'd get no loans.
There is no such agencies in lots of countries (e.g. France) and still people get loans. When I came to US, I had to purposely take extra credits/loans to boost my inexistent credit history. Now I am credit worthy thanks to my artificial debt.
I'm not arguing against you, just curious... in France, what prevents people from just applying for loans over and over and never paying them back?
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#584So everybody has been talking about "freezing" your Equifax account for a little bit of protection... Well it turns out the Equifax security freeze PIN (which is all the "secret" info an attacker needs to unfreeze it) is just the date & time: MMDDYYHHMM! https://mobile.twitter.com/webster/status/906346071210778625
Has anyone notified them of this bafoonery?
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your bank gives it to them.
how does the bank decide which credit reporting firm to give them to? in other words, if I made an Equifax competitor, how would I convince banks to give me this info?
> how would I convince banks to give me this info?
Read "The Art of the Deal.|"
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, class action suits aren't really about recovering damages for the class members. Or at least, not entirely. That's almost incidental. Rather, they're most often about leveraging a large class of injured parties--whose injuries are usually relatively minor on an individual basis--to force a change of behavior by adding up all of those small injuries. The cost of pursuing each claim individually would usual…
> It might seem unfair at first glance, but it enables the class to access the legal system and justice where it otherwise would not. The fact that it requires so much expertise and money to "access the legal system" in this way is in itself incredibly unfair and unjust. It's a completely broken system.
Yeah, but how can that be solved? The law is very complex in any advanced country (I'd argue necessarily so), and requires specialists to navigate it.
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#587Is it time for a Federal Department of Verifying Whether People Are Who They Say They Are? Veryifying identity with SSN is broken. The right way is probably more or less how big webapps do it - MFA + a password that the user can reset by providing a bunch of info. The government has the necessary private info to do this in most cases (e.g. DL# plus your income from last year's taxes), and can fall back to "Show up at…
USPS is a good contender for identity validation, too.
I would not trust USPS with anything. I came by to pick up my mail and they gave me someone else's mail - a stack of 40 some letters / documents - all sorts of sensitive stuff that I could in theory open up and steal that person's identity.
Please, think before you say USPS... this agency is broken as hell. The last thing we want to do is trust our identities to them.
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
ugh. even their 10 digit code they provide to unfreeze someone isn't very secure. It's simply todays date plus a 4 digit pin that moves up in the order that someone signs up. For example: 090817xxx1, 090817xxx2. So my wife and I are simply two numbers apart.
It worse. It's not even a 4 digit PIN. It's the time in 24-hour format HHMM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15205579 You and your wife just did it 1 minute apart...
I can't even imagine how something like that can be implemented. Even if you put the most junior developer on this, something so serious should have been reviewed by someone. At least do a quick search on stack overflow or something.
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#589Apologists please STFU you're making me sick. Everyone else, call your representative. You know how people say, "Pictures or it didn't happen?" Call your representatives and tell them what you think, or it might as well have never happened.
Your comment history is some of the worst stuff on HN and some of the best stuff on HN. Could you attempt to leave out the worst bits?
When taking extreme positions or offering gambles at humor or impression, it is often impossible to know which side of the line you will fall. As they say in Hollywood, no one knows anything (about what will become a hit).
Re: Equifax Faces Multibillion-Dollar Lawsuit Over Hack
#590I'm not excited about this class action; If they win, the individual payout will be almost nothing ($10?). The lawyers are the only ones who will really "make out" with 10's of millions in fees. There is also a disproportionate effect in that a small portion of the 143 million affected will have a large impact, i.e., "identity theft" while most will be unaffected. I think a fund setup to help those who are directly a…
IMO, the best outcome would be to put Equifax out of business. I have had my identity stolen and they were complicit in enabling the fraud against me. Once you tell them you're NPI has been compromised, they get incredibly passive aggressive against you and refuse to allow you to manage the situation (i.e. they won't let you unlock your credit to apply for a mortgage). In short, this breach of public "trust" is only…
C'mon we live in the real world here. What makes you think Equifax will be put out of business? I agree, the scumbags should be put down like a suffering animal but that will never happen.