The Equifax hacking scandal clearly illustrates three
important issues for U.S. consumers.
First, what we used to call credit bureaus are now data miners
and data sweepers. These firms sweep the entire electronic world for your data,
collect it, collate it and sell it.
Those long, almost unreadable “terms of service” statements we
routinely click – we surrender most of our rights to privacy and often our
rights to due process (via mandatory arbitration clauses).
So unless you live in a log cabin in the wilderness and live
by barter you are in the system and you are vulnerable.
Second, cybersecurity is not really effective when lots of
people receive large paychecks for being incompetent. Even well run
organizations are subjects to hacks. There is no escape.
Third, once the breach happens it is difficult to “unscramble
the eggs.” No one really knows how to fix the problem?
Equifax failed to disclose the breach in a timely
manner, set up a useless website to suck you in, and then wanted to sell you
data protection services. No ethics in that company.
You are on your own – be very careful.
