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Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

krebsonsecurity.com

111–120 of 140 posts

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#111
post #4

Anyone have any idea if Experian and Transunion have something similar?

There are lots of companies in this space. If the big ones don't, there is a smaller, creepier one or a subsidiary that does. As an example, One firm managed to figure out the correct expected birthdate of our child. The only record of this child are the medical and prescription records of the near fatal miscarriage that my wife was hospitalized for at 9 weeks. If they can get that, one or more somebodies is paying o…

No birth certificate? Those are, iirc, public records.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a better way to ensure knowledge based authentication continuity for all online IRS transactions until they switch providers, I'd love to hear it.

The first step would be open bidding to determine who is able to provide what.

That's not how business continuity works. You don't just pull the plug on your vendor when its a critical component of your business (or in this case, a public service).

What are you going to do if you have a dispute with your payment processor? Just stop processing payments while you switch providers? Its like no one here has run a legitimate business before.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public tax returns would make it much easier for people to put pressure on others working toward financial independence. In some poor communities, there's a strong ethic of sharing good fortune. That's good in many ways, but also makes it hard to climb out of poverty. More generally, lots of people have unbounded spending habits, and some will put a lot of pressure on friends/family if they find out they have any sav…

For what it is worth, every time I hear the phrase "working toward financial independence", it sounds like Newspeak to me. Let's call it what it is: almost everyone wants to make money because satisfying our various needs is part of the human condition.

I think the phrase "financial independence" has a lot to offer as a description of a mode of living that poor communities generally do not display. A lot of poor people spend a sort of weighted average of the earnings of their family group -- if your personal income happens to be down right now, you can borrow money from someone who's having an up period. This is what winston_smith is referring to when he says "in some poor communities, there's a strong ethic of sharing good fortune", and it's a different concept than "money is good".

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#114
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't really mandate implants. Well, you could but that's how you get open revolution in the streets.

Luckily we already have 2fa implants. They're called retinas or fingerprints, to be used in conjunction with passwords. What you have, what you know, what you are. Those are the three factors. Passwords and fingerprints are two of them.

I'm not sure I'd generally refer to those as implants, but point taken.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If some people 'suck' at negotiating then that must mean there are others who are 'better' at negotiating If I have a guardian who pays my rent so that i can take 6months to high ball offers to finally find a job that will pay me a high wage does that mean I'm 'better' at negotiating?

What stops you from taking the first job you find, and then spending 6 months while working looking for better jobs? It hardly is THAT hard to get some competing offers. And if you can't be bothered, I guess you don't really want it anyway?

Idk why you are getting downvoted, because you are obviously right.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of companies in this space. If the big ones don't, there is a smaller, creepier one or a subsidiary that does. As an example, One firm managed to figure out the correct expected birthdate of our child. The only record of this child are the medical and prescription records of the near fatal miscarriage that my wife was hospitalized for at 9 weeks. If they can get that, one or more somebodies is paying o…

No birth certificate? Those are, iirc, public records.

The child was never born. The only records are “anonymous” by HIPPA standards data that the hospital or insurance co likely sells or shares with 3rd parties who can match a hospital admission to our mailing address.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#117
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's time to just make tax returns (and therefore salaries) part of the public record. I think that transparency could make for a more fair process and also level negotiation since the compensation would then be about the role and how good someone is actually rated, rather than about how much they happened to have been paid in the past or how good they are about lying about it.

It'd be great to read the arguments against making them public. There's good reasons why we should make them public available here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/yourtaxes/14discl... Secrecy is good in many places, but I can't think of why it is good for tax returns, asides from perhaps allowing criminals to more easily target those with high incomes?

Personal privacy? An interested party could learn a lot about someone from deductions: marital status, children, charitable contributions, etc. Not to mention income, which people have a variety of reasons for not sharing. Considering how many databases my face is probably linked to now and how good facial recognition technology is becoming, I'm not keen on tax records becoming another set of labels some real-time smart camera can attach to me walking down the street.

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first step would be open bidding to determine who is able to provide what.

That's not how business continuity works. You don't just pull the plug on your vendor when its a critical component of your business (or in this case, a public service). What are you going to do if you have a dispute with your payment processor? Just stop processing payments while you switch providers? Its like no one here has run a legitimate business before.

I think a dispute with a payment processor is an issue on a little different scale than the leak of every American's credit history and PII.

Regardless of what the options are, it's a colossal PR misstep that deserved a much more thorough explanation from the IRS than "they're the only ones who can provide this service that we can't readily explain".

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public tax returns would make it much easier for people to put pressure on others working toward financial independence. In some poor communities, there's a strong ethic of sharing good fortune. That's good in many ways, but also makes it hard to climb out of poverty. More generally, lots of people have unbounded spending habits, and some will put a lot of pressure on friends/family if they find out they have any sav…

For what it is worth, every time I hear the phrase "working toward financial independence", it sounds like Newspeak to me. Let's call it what it is: almost everyone wants to make money because satisfying our various needs is part of the human condition.

Or it could mean "having made and then saved enough to make one's own way in a capitalistic economy instead of being at the behest of employers."

Re: Equifax Breach Fallout: Your Salary History

#120

> The service is designed to provide automated employment and income verification for prospective employers, and tens of thousands of companies report employee salary data to it. It sounds like companies can easily use this to collude against employee wages and benefits.

This is why you never agree to a background/credit check from an employer unless you have an offer – with a number – in hand.
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