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Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

nytimes.com

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Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#71
post #62
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might as well not even vote. Your one votes can't turn the tide.

The next election is going to be decided by about 5% of the country that’s contested. Everyone else might as well not even bother filling in the box for president

Asimov's story takes this to its (extreme) logical conclusion:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_(short_story)

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#72
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were incredibly negligent and nepotistic. Their head of security, Susan Mauldin, had zero security or computer skills - she was a music teacher. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/equifax-ceo-hired-a-music-...

It appears that the higher you go up the corporate ladder, the more it is about connections rather than actual knowledge, to the point that knowledge carries almost zero weight and connections are everything. A lot of companies are like this, and most of them (including Equifax) are still going strong. Meritocracy at the bottom and nepotism at the top seems to be the deal. Anyway, the last line of the article sums it…

This is the way the corporate world has always worked. The problem is when this world collides with software, where actually knowing what the hell you're doing matters.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#73
post #53
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, instead of getting my lender to give me a better interest rate or a discount on fees, I'm going to instead use my negotiating leverage to make sure Equifax makes $20 less revenue.

Might as well not even vote. Your one votes can't turn the tide.

That's not what they said though, they said they are gonna vote for whoever makes their life directly better in the relative short term.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#74
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenders don't look at credit karma, so they are useless, can show you any number you like.

That's not how this works. Credit Karma buys the data for their free product from Equifax. So if lenders look at Equifax (and they do) then that's the exact same data. You might wonder, "But if their product is free and they spend money buying the data for it, how can that make financial sense?" and that's the thing most consumers don't understand. What's better than selling advertising? Selling actual _customers_. N…

> Credit Karma buys the data for their free product from Equifax.

Well, sorta. Credit Karma uses VantageScore 3.0 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VantageScore), which is different from the various FICO offerings, sometimes substantially. VantageScore has four different generations.

FICO has over sixty variants - by credit bureau, relevant industry (there is, for example, a mortgage-specific calculation), and generation (FICO 8 vs FICO 9).

As a result, depending on what score offering they pull, your lender may see a number that's 100 points different than the one Credit Karma shows.

> So you sign into Credit Karma and it says you're doing well, and they suggest you could get this MegaBank Gold Card. In fact, they've checked and you'll definitely qualify, no risk.

This is another misconception. "Pre-approval" doesn't mean they actually ran the numbers; they just have stats on how many people with a similar VantageScore succeeded when they applied via CK's referral links. If you look closely, CK's "you're pre-approved!" tag actually has this disclaimer underneath it:

"90% of pre-approved applicants get this card. Approval not guaranteed; subject to checks."

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#75
post #70
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next election is going to be decided by about 5% of the country that’s contested. Everyone else might as well not even bother filling in the box for president

There are more votes than just the presidential election.

Yeah that’s why I just said presidential a lot of other important elections that count on the downballot

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#76
Everyone needs to realize that the whole "fine" was just an inside deal. Who do you think provides credit monitoring services? That's right, credit bureaus. That's why the they're pushing everyone to take the "free credit monitoring", so they recover the loss from the fine.

If they were to pay all 140 million people $125, the sum would be $17b or so, which is an appropriate fine.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#77
post #6

If anyone is getting a mortgage or refinancing soon, ask your lender to 'drop' equifax without running your score with them - just take the score from the other two. Equifax is an unnecessary security and privacy risk. They are a horrible company that needs to go out of business. Make their customers feel embarrassed to be doing business with them.

At the very least, government sponsored entities should not give them money. I have tried to ask both Queens Borough Public Library and Research Foundation City University of New York (RF CUNY) but nobody I talk to has any authority on this matter.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#78
post #42
post #12

I'm definitely going to write a letter objecting to the settlement, and will urge everyone I know to do so as well.

To what? The Trump-controlled FTC? The castrated CFPB that now spends its time promoting a partnership with the most medieval red states called the "Financial Innovation Network" ( https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/bureau-sta... )? Where do you think that's going to get you?

Orange man bad. You're right.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reasons for losing sales get put in a database, and people pay attention when the same reason shows up repeatedly.

In my experience, nobody cares. I remember how long it took before Netflix finally supported a player on Linux desktop. And in the end, their decision had zero to do with customer demand or complaints for that feature. You can log reasons for bad business outcomes all day long, millions and millions, and it won’t change corporate behavior.

Just pointing out that this analogy doesn't hold. Netflix's customer base running desktop Linux are a rounding error for the foreseeable future. 99% of any lender's customers would be at least somewhat pleased to drop Equifax and none of them receive any benefit from using Equifax's service over their competitors.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#80

Everyone needs to realize that the whole "fine" was just an inside deal. Who do you think provides credit monitoring services? That's right, credit bureaus. That's why the they're pushing everyone to take the "free credit monitoring", so they recover the loss from the fine. If they were to pay all 140 million people $125, the sum would be $17b or so, which is an appropriate fine.

You're right, $17B (or more, or dissolving the company) would start to actually spark off some real change in attitudes towards infosec among executives, instead of just continuing the status quo with this non-enforcement action.

The strangest part of this ordeal was when that guy from the FTC was encouraging consumers to take the monitoring on Equifax's request.

They're not even pretending to be regulated anymore, they just come out and tell the government what to say.

The senate report on this hack goes into lots of technical detail, savaging Equifax for their gross incompetence and negligence beat by beat: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FINAL%20Equifax%2...

Despite all this provable negligence and incompetence all laid out in writing for everyone to see they still suffered zero real consequences. This is going to keep happening over and over and over again until we decide it's unacceptable.

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