- Jared Hartman, Esq.
- Posted on September 21, 2017
Semnar & Hartman Prosecuting Equifax For Massive Data Breach
By now, virtually all Americans must have learned about the massive data breach of Equifax that occurred earlier this year. On September 7, 2017, Equifax announced publicly (for the first time) that it had been the subject of a hackers’ data breach in July of 2017, and that the personal and financial information on upwards of 143 million people within the U.S. had been accessed.
All major news agencies have been consistently reporting on this widescale scandal for the past couple of weeks. One need only Google “Equifax data breach” to be inundated with a series of news articles that have been published on an almost daily basis up to now.
This all has come out at a time while there has been a strong on-going push by conservative lobbyists and lawmakers to reduce penalties available under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, to eliminate class actions, and to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as a result the cause for protecting and strengthening such pro-consumer laws and federal agencies has been thrust into the public eye.
The severity of this problem should be obvious: Equifax is a company that stores all varieties of personal and financial information, (bank account numbers, credit card numbers, social security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, and much more), and coagulates that information for sale to other companies who need only claim to Equifax to have a “legitimate business purpose” in order to obtain such information, such as landlords, financial institutions, government agencies, debt collectors, investigators, and more. Our firm has even prosecuted scam artists who were able to obtain private information on previous clients by incorporating a debt collection company so that the credit reporting agencies would believe their claim of “legitimate business purpose”, when in reality their business practices were to falsely threaten the consumers with arrest if they did not pay exorbitant amounts of money that they did not actually owe.
It should go without saying, then, that the case for strengthening strangers’ access to consumers’ private information should be advanced. Unfortunately, however, Equifax treats such information (and the people associated with the information) as commodities, because Equifax consistently makes dozens of billions of dollars off their business practice of selling peoples’ information. And by treating such highly confidential and sensitive information as a commodity, Equifax appears to have been far too lax in its approach towards maintain the sanctity and security of this information.
As more and more information has come out, and continues to come out, it seems that Equifax has been the subject of multiple data breaches over the past several years (including one in March that they failed to disclose on Sept 7th), which means that they should have known that their systems are subjected to on-going attacks and they should have taken extra precautions to prevent such a data breach. Yet they failed to do so. By failing to properly inform the public of such breaches, and attempted breaches, they have left people at risk.
If people had been informed sooner, then the people could have taken their own steps to monitor their own information, such as purchasing credit monitoring services from a reliable third-party source in order to receive notifications of new changes to credit files (such as receiving alerts when a new application for credit has been submitted in their name). Also, if people had been informed sooner, then they could have been more diligent about requesting credit freezes to ensure that no new credit applications could be taken out in their name without proving to the creditor that the applicant is truly the person who they say they are.
One is instead left to question how many people did, in fact, become a victim of identity theft during the months that Equifax failed to disclose the breach to the public, and to also ponder whether such identity theft could have been prevented had the public been properly informed sooner?
And now, for all time into the foreseeable future, everyone whose information was subjected to the breach is left to wonder when their information will be used for nefarious purposes by the culprits whose desire it is to commit identity theft and/or stealing directly from bank accounts.
When corporate profits are placed over the concern and well-being of the people, then the people undoubtedly suffer and lose—often-times with such losses being irreparable.
Thankfully, there are strong consumer advocates across the country who are ready to jump in to the battle and continue to fight for what is right in this world. For example, we have recently filed a Class Action lawsuit against Equifax to not only seek monetary compensation for our client, and all Class members, for the damage caused by the breach based upon Negligence principles, but to also request injunctive relief so that the courts can order Equifax to fix its problem. Our Complaint can be read by clicking HERE.
As always, if you or a loved one has any concerns about issues related to credit reporting, whether you have been identified as one of the “effected” people or even if you have something inaccurate on your credit reports, please do not hesitate to contact us for a free and confidential consultation.