Equifax Security Breach - Execs Sell Stock...

[RShea]

If they decided to sell after they were informed of the discovery, that's pretty stupid. It could be that the sales were planned beforehand, and previously disclosed.

Their claim from what I read so far has been they did not know about the breach and sold the stock without any insider knowledge of the coming announcement. Probably courts will decide if that is true or not when the insider trading charges come about.

[Supermoon]

So I'm moving to a new city and need to apply for a mortgage. If I freeze my credit, does that totally fuck us?

Love the idea of small claims for these fuckers

[Todds]

They changed their terms and you can opt-out of arbitration

"Right to Opt-Out of this Arbitration Provision. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE BOUND BY THE ARBITRATION PROVISION, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO EXCLUDE YOURSELF. Opting out of the arbitration provision will have no adverse effect on your relationship with Equifax or the delivery of Products to You by Equifax. In order to exclude Yourself from the arbitration provision, You must notify Equifax in writing within 30 days of the date that You first accept this Agreement on the Site (for Products purchased from Equifax on the Site). If You purchased Your Product other than on the Site, and thus this Agreement was mailed, emailed or otherwise delivered to You, then You must notify Equifax in writing within 30 days of the date that You receive this Agreement. To be effective, timely written notice of opt out must be delivered to Equifax Consumer Services LLC, Attn.: Arbitration Opt-Out, P.O. Box 105496, Atlanta, GA 30348, and must include Your name, address, and Equifax User ID, as well as a clear statement that You do not wish to resolve disputes with Equifax through arbitration. If You have previously notified Equifax that You wish to opt-out of arbitration, You are not required to do so again. Any opt-out request postmarked after the opt-out deadline or that fails to satisfy the other requirements above will not be valid, and You must pursue your Claim in arbitration or small claims court."


http://www.equifax.com/terms/

[Todds]

How much of a pain is it to put a freeze on your credit? I'm not moving anytime soon, no plans to get a new job or a car loan. I know that I need to pay something like $10 to each of them every time every time I lock/unlock it.

[WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot]

we're fucked.completely.totaly.fucked

[FLS]

Relax, go about your day. Nothing to see here.

[SkiCougar]

Equifax's security breach exposed 143 million records including passwords, SSN, other that could lead to massive identity theft. Probably most of us are potentially affected. The breach was discovered in late July but not disclosed until yesterday. So what do three of their top execs do? Why, sell big chunks of their stock on Aug 1, of course! Knowing their stock was going to tank once the breach was made public, better sell while the getting's good, right? I hope these guys get some prison time for this. Insider trading at its blatant best.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/08/inve...ach/index.html

Those guys should definitely serve time, but data breaches are going to get much worse as long as there's one person in a company that will click on any email sent to them.

Anyone today that isn't keeping their online purchases to a minimum or hands out their cards for purchases everywhere is going to have their identity stolen in their lifetime if they are under 50.

I know no one uses cash anymore, but it's good for one thing; minimizes ways to get you identity stolen. I use it for any purchase for under $300 for that reason.

[Bobby Stainless]

I use cash for weed. So at least I am safe there.

[char_]

An interesting comment I saw noted that SSN are not supposed to be used as identity cards, yet large financial institutions do anyways. Even power companies etc. The suggestion was to just publish all the numbers.

As for paying 10 bucks to freeze my credit score, why should I have to pay the people that lost my info to protect me? 143 million sitting up credit freezes is not a reasonable solution.

[KenJongIll]

Attachment 211782
Neato!

Enter any random name and numbers and see what you get.

[KenJongIll]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/y...to-do-now.html

[old goat]

Those guys should definitely serve time, but data breaches are going to get much worse as long as there's one person in a company that will click on any email sent to them.

Anyone today that isn't keeping their online purchases to a minimum or hands out their cards for purchases everywhere is going to have their identity stolen in their lifetime if they are under 50.

I know no one uses cash anymore, but it's good for one thing; minimizes ways to get you identity stolen. I use it for any purchase for under $300 for that reason.

Your credit card number is not your identity. If someone gets your cc number and buys something it won't cost you a dime (it's the merchant who is normally on the hook). There is the hassle of having to get a new card and change the number on any accounts that you pay monthly by cc. SSN--that's a problem.

An interesting comment I saw noted that SSN are not supposed to be used as identity cards, yet large financial institutions do anyways. Even power companies etc. The suggestion was to just publish all the numbers.

As for paying 10 bucks to freeze my credit score, why should I have to pay the people that lost my info to protect me? 143 million sitting up credit freezes is not a reasonable solution.

The one that pisses me off is Medicare--your medicare number is your ssn plus a letter and you're supposed to show it when you go to the doctor, pharmacy, etc. (When I started at Kaiser there was a computer function available to just about everyone at Kaiser to look up a patients medical record number by searching their name--you also got their SSN. They eventually fixed it.)
Banks and employers have to have your ssn because they report to the IRS, of course. I've never had anyone other than Medicare use it for an ID # though.

[hutash]

I'm putting all my assets into bit coin, that should solve the problem

[Todds]

Your credit card number is not your identity. If someone gets your cc number and buys something it won't cost you a dime (it's the merchant who is normally on the hook). There is the hassle of having to get a new card and change the number on any accounts that you pay monthly by cc. SSN--that's a problem.
.

It's a little more complicated if you use a visa/MC debit card. If someone gets that number your bank account gets drained. Eventually you get the money back, but the checks you write might bounce in the meantime.

[Ted Striker]

Banks and employers have to have your ssn because they report to the IRS, of course. I've never had anyone other than Medicare use it for an ID # though.

Lots of companies ask for your SSN because the credit bureaus have, as part of a marketing campaign, expanded their business from simply reporting a person's utilization of credit/debt, to predicting their trustworthiness. Which isn't the same thing, but hey, gotta grow the business, right?

Whether or not those companies use your social as an identifier, or for account holder verification is kind of a moot point. They don't need it. They've just been sold the dubious idea that they do, by the folks who have monetized your identity.

[Mustonen]

2nd that
It's all a scam to justify lenders to charge higher rates or ask for a pound of flesh.

Credit scores correlate pretty well to default rates...... we bitch and moan about the system, but as much as it allows lenders to charge higher rates for subprime credit, it lets lenders charge lower rates for good credit. Net interest margin has to cover operating expenses, period.

[Mustonen]

Your credit card number is not your identity. If someone gets your cc number and buys something it won't cost you a dime (it's the merchant who is normally on the hook). There is the hassle of having to get a new card and change the number on any accounts that you pay monthly by cc. SSN--that's a problem.

Yes - cards are great because they're disposable.

Also, just throwing in there that the vast majority of plastic card fraud falls on issuers (banks), NOT merchants. It's like 3 to 1.

[mall walker]

Credit scores correlate pretty well to default rates...... we bitch and moan about the system, but as much as it allows lenders to charge higher rates for subprime credit, it lets lenders charge lower rates for good credit. Net interest margin has to cover operating expenses, period.

It's still absurd that the FICO algorithm is proprietary. One of the weird corporate triopolies with inexplicably little/no oversight is determining - according to an invisible standard - a number that determines how much you pay for a home, whether you can buy a car or rent an apartment, etc.

Obviously it makes sense to track whether people historically default on debt and I don't dispute that a credit score is a useful means of doing this, but this in practice effects most people (even landlords check credit of tenants) so it's a bit ridiculous that the score algorithm is proprietary and these 3 nebulous corporate entities control this information entirely.

More great news: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/08/ps...mobilenavtrend

[Mustonen]

Not everybody uses FICO, but most do. I'm not aware that it's owned by the big three credit bureaus.

I get what you're saying about the black box, though I don't know that I'd consider it better to make the algorithms public. In broad strokes, the machinations of FICO are pretty well understood.

[Mustonen]

And... having worked with all 3 credit bureaus on the b2b side, I can comfortably say they have their heads firmly up their asses. Not defending those dumb motherfuckers one bit. I'm surprised this hasn't happened before now.

[skideeppow]

So I'm moving to a new city and need to apply for a mortgage. If I freeze my credit, does that totally fuck us?

Love the idea of small claims for these fuckers

If you feeeze is, the lender will just ask you to call the commonly and allow for that credit pull.

[digitaldeath]

Do not interact with these fascist list making companies

[mall walker]

If you are affected by actually fraudulent activity, Patrick McKenzie as usual is spot-on: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/...redit-reports/

[FLS]

Former Gov. Roy Barnes, others file Equifax data breach class action

http://www.ajc.com/business/former-gov-roy-barnes-others-file-equifax-data-breach-class-action/x1byRfcdw2ABAkxpFerrBL/

Really want your head to explode.... You can read some first hand stories from people that worked at Equifax over on Reddit. What a shit show.

[Conundrum]

It says mine wasn't impacted but still will let me sign up for stuff. I didn't.