Equifax leak?

[SteveinMN]

Unlike credit card data which rapidly becomes worthless after a breach becomes public knowledge, the info they've stolen here won't lose value over time. As such I doubt they're doing anything with it now. [snip] But a couple years from now [is] when all these SSN's will start hitting the black market.

Yup. So Equifax thinks they look like a good Joe by offering me a free year of credit alerts (undoubtedly with requests to re-up for $$ starting six months after the coverage starts). BFD. Criminals smart enough to pull off a heist like this are smart enough to sit on the spoils for a year or two. In fact, I didn't even sign up for their coverage. I'll let the (free) fraud alert and freeze do the talking.

What SHOULD happen, but almost certainly won't, is that congress should pass a law freezing everyone's credit and enabling us to pick and choose who we want the credit bureaus to release information to at no cost to the individual.

I didn't pick these careless yahoos (speaking of breaches) to monitor a chunk of my life. But I don't fool myself -- it could just as well have been Experian or TransUnion who got hit first. Unfortunately, I think the only persons in Congress who see it the consumer's way are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Two people are not enough. I don't expect real change anytime soon.

[Rogar]

Does anyone other than me find it creepy that this breach makes 143 million or so Americans vulnerable to identity theft the remainder of their lives? This is like having diabetes or HIV or Parkinson's - no cures known but the disease is managed as best as possible. I'm seeing freezing my credit in this way - managing a disease as best as possible. Rob

It gets into some sort of subjective risk analysis, but grabbing a speculative number out of the air, I suspect that less than half of the people affected will freeze their credit. I could see some sophisticated nasty people making an orchestrated effort to affect our economy with this information. Probably it's just some thugs trying to make money, but I would not rule political motivation totally out.

[Williamsmith]

I would think a company whose bread and butter relies on cyber security would be at the cutting edge of protective software and systems. But no, we find out that information might as well have been stored on a server at the local stop and rob gas station.

Perhaps.....and this is mystery writing stuff.....but perhaps they are feeding us the narrative about the window being open due to lack of due diligence in patching holes......in order to cover up the inside job and the espionage that occurred.

[nswef]

Handmaid's Tale anyone????
Robert Ludlum tale...

[ToomuchStuff]

A more accurate statement would be "Does anyone other than me find it creepy that this breach HAS MADE 143 million of us victims of identity theft, for which we will suffer consequences for the rest of our lives?"

Previously I'd contemplated doing credit freezes. However, to my knowledge my SSN had not been stolen and therefore the hassles outweighed the benefits. That has changed now and I will be putting freezes on all 3 bureaus that they will have to pull from my cold dead hands. The credit bureaus make the freeze process a costly hassle because, frankly, it screws up their business model if lots of people have freezes. What SHOULD happen, but almost certainly won't, is that congress should pass a law freezing everyone's credit and enabling us to pick and choose who we want the credit bureaus to release information to at no cost to the individual.

First time I ever wished there was a like button for a post!

[SteveinMN]

So now both Equifax's Chief Information Officer and Chief Security Officer have been shown the door. They "retired" which, I imagine, leaves their benefits intact.

Someone on my Facebook feed posted CSO Mauldin's Linkedin profile, noting that she has two college degrees, both in music. That does not bother me tremendously because there are many people in IT and related fields who do not have degrees or degrees in anything close to what they do in IT well and what they have achieved over entire careers. But one commenter on that post noted that the music degrees might mean the Equifax song and dance about what happened likely would be in tune and well-choreographed.

[Yppej]

Today I saw two companies trying to cash in on tbe breach. Both Experian and Discover are offering to scour the dark web for your SSN for free for Experian as a prelude to trying to sell you credit monitoring services and by Discover if you get their card. Has anyone done this? Does it have any value?

[frugal-one]

+1

(and where is the government in all this - at least they shouild be cracking down hard on Equifax/ Oh right looks at who is in charge - shippest of biggest fools ever to sail the ship of state ever - never mind ....)

The government has compromised me twice and DH once. Now also compromised by Equifax. Government is paying for security monitoring for a few years. IMO it should be for life since they "leaked."

[ToomuchStuff]

Today I saw two companies trying to cash in on tbe breach. Both Experian and Discover are offering to scour the dark web for your SSN for free for Experian as a prelude to trying to sell you credit monitoring services and by Discover if you get their card. Has anyone done this? Does it have any value?

Grab a pen and a piece of paper, or go print this on your printer......
0........, now read what you wrote or printed, and write that down. Do you see two zero's? How many copies can you make and in what forms? Does the information change?
Of course they are "scouring" the dark web, as they are hoping to find and charge the hackers (and gain some assemblage of cleaning up). The deed is done, and the value matches what you and what anyone else doing this experiment wrote.

[Yppej]

Thank you Toomuchstuff.