Equifax finally coughs up the money for its 2017 monster hack… to the banks for having to cancel your cards Equifax has finally agreed to pay compensation for the massive security breach it suffered in 2017 that led to the theft of at least 146 million people's personal info. But before you get excited, the money won’t be going to you, but rather to your bank, which will be paid for the hassle of having to cancel your payment cards …
You ... pull that ATM over here. You .. yeah you ... park that Uber van on top of the ATM. Kids -- get out there and add every Network Interface Connector and router you can find and put them on the pile. Now ... the torch
Boy, look at those cops run. They know whats good for them. You two take those police cars and round up some regulators and financial execs. We're gonna put them to work cleaning the sewers with a toothbrush.
A flag? Great. Stand next to the bonfire and wave it. Ignore the damn teargas and the rubber bullets. Show some brass ...
Now, everybody ... On three ... One ... Two ... Three
"Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again"
...
OK, OK -- not gonna happen. But I can dream can't I?
Yes it's quite a quaint and charming rose-tinted view of the world isn't it to assume that the whole US Financial services industry is set up to do anything other than serve it's so called customers.
The US Financial sector is as blatantly rotten to the core as is its Legal and Political systems.
It does not appear to matter how bad the breach is, what is breached and how many are affected, ultimate those responsible just carry on as normal. The companies responsible just wheedle there way out of everything and the regulator continue the charade and connive with them to ensure that the fines and compensation are derisory.
The problem is that so much has been breached now that it is become pretty much impossible to guarantee that your personal information is safe.
This is also a key reason why infosec has got worse rather than better over the last 30-odd years. All the losses are either externalities (the customers') or effectively coffee money for giant corporations. As far as I know, DigiNotar is the only company that actually went out of business as a result of a data breach, and that was because it was a subsidiary to a holding company that shut it down just to avoid embarrassment.
Another key reason (although not in the case of Equifax, where we don't have a choice) is that despite the breaches, "we" the public go on using the services (e.g. Yahoo, Facebook) so quite a bit of the problem is actually down to us as well.
from start to finish the saga is a great incentive to imitate equifucks approach to "their" loss, from the beginning, i.e. failure to protect data, to the very end, i.e. repay the victims (not).
But hey, we're talking here about some ueber-dodgy, gold-pistol waving 5th world African dictatorship, right?
You can OFC refuse to deal with anyone who passes your information to these "credit agencies", don't fill out any forms until they have signed off on not passing your data to third parties.
I had a fun time in the UK finding a bank or building society that would not pass my daughters details on but they do exist
In my case it was Nationwide Building Society, the others I checked insisted that accounts even without an ability to create debt would still require passing info to these leeches, I presume because the bank got a kick back at their customers expense.
So my advice is to stop agreeing to financial institutions selling your data, if everyone stopped using credit then the effect would be to make every service and commodity that remained cheaper and more focused upon the people who make their existence possible.
Remember without your business the banks/building societies cannot operate, given that the vast majority of their wealth comes from borrowing off Peter to loan to Paul. If Peter sleeps on his wealth instead of giving it to the banks then where does the money to lend Paul come from? they might have stored wealth but it is not enough to continue operations as they are today.
For too long you have given the banks the impression that Peter is going to sit still for any abuse they can think of, perhaps the time is right to put them back in their place.
You can lobby your representatives if you like but since most have been fettered by these leeches then it is going to take a very long time to turn it around if you do not do it yourself.
...then customers will eventually get their checks...
Maybe, or maybe not; Equifax had details and were selling information on virtually everyone in the US and substantial numbers in the EU, but they are saying that only a few people were hacked, they got to choose whose names were on the list and as a result, even though they completely screwed up, nobody was punished and they are still making a nice profit.
This is normal. No matter the settlement, the lawyers grab up to 75% of the take with another 20% taken by the courts as fees. In a fair and equitable settlement, the defendants would be liable for all fees, costs and expenses in addition to the amount of any settlement. In the case of Equifax, they should be coughing up the $700 Million for you me and guy behind the tree, PLUS the attorney fees based on actual hours and not 30%-40% of the settlement PLUS court costs PLUS itemized and substantiated litigation related expenses.
Like the ABA is ever going to allow that to happen.
"...so it’s perhaps surprising that not a cent appears to been given to the people directly impacted by the cyber-break-in."
Only to tribal Amazonian abductees who just learned about America. Otherwise, barely approaches the banality of a middle-eastern human rights violation. *yawn* What's next on today's docket of horrors?
These type of agencies should have been closed down when GDPR came into effect. There is no reason they should hold such vast amounts of data on individuals in a proven insecure manner and not give the end user any choice over it.
The principle of not allowing someone to run up bad debts all over the place is understandable but there is other ways this could be done securely and without commercial companies involved. The dire consequences for some by not being allowed into the regular banking system if you were to refuse your details being held with a credit reference agency, means there is no realistic option to not agree to your data being passed to these agencies.
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