{"id":407,"date":"2018-08-06T18:34:54","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T22:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/blog\/?p=396"},"modified":"2024-11-14T10:45:11","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T15:45:11","slug":"equifax-data-breach-identity-protection","status":"publish","type":"data-breaches","link":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/data-breaches\/equifax-data-breach-identity-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"The Equifax Data Breach and Identity Protection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s not just Equifax.  The entire industry is full of itself, corrupt, and hawking services with close to zero value.  It\u2019s hard to find the perfect words, but the best descriptor for current identity protection is probably simple: \u201cinsurance fraud\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem of managing our identity online is real \u2013 we live increasingly digital lives with the inevitable result that our information is more and more exposed.  At the same time, hackers and the tools they use for finding data online are always improving.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Equifax data breach is literally the last demonstration the public should need to see clearly that big company solutions today claiming to protect our identities are a joke.  They need to be destroyed and recreated from the ground up.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Equifax is telling consumers it will protect them, now, really? Really.<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, allowed a natural monopoly by our government, are scoring us, selling our data, and then re-selling us on paying them more money to protect our data files.  In the Equifax data breach, this hypocrisy has now reached beyond absurd levels:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEquifax to Offer Free Identity Theft Protection and Credit File Monitoring to All U.S. Consumers\u201d.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What?  After Equifax gets hacked and loses people\u2019s social security, driver\u2019s licenses, and other personal info, they will remedy consumers how?  With it\u2019s very own trusted Equifax protection?  This is the crisis response from a $15-billion business that made the 2017 Forbes list of World\u2019s Most Innovative Companies.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this is identity protection, then Congress under the FCRA should have Equifax and rest of the industry refund all US customers\u2019 money right now.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consumers are buying bad product with good marketing<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just the industry.  It\u2019s us consumers who are buying a bad product.  We are what we are \u2013 busy, attention-challenged, brand-trusting people trying \u2013 and rightly so \u2013 to think ahead and to protect ourselves from harms.  We talk to each other: \u201cDid you hear about Jenny and Jim \u2013 someone took out 3 credit cards and a $10,000 auto-loan on them?\u201d  \u201cRick\u2019s friend never got that tax return money in the mail \u2013 now he\u2019s been back and forth to the state capitol five times.\u201d  Such horror stories spread quickly at places like the Michigan International Speedway NASCAR races, which Lifelock sponsored.  The CEO, so confident in his own service, he wore his own social security number in public ads for all to see.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the problems seem personal and the marketing sounds great \u2013 $1M dollars of protection, lost wallet reimbursement, etc, people naturally buy in.  But it\u2019s (almost) all totally worthless.  If the industry was forced to publish in dollars how much it had spent to remediate identity theft claims it would \u2013 I guarantee \u2013 amount to less than one-tenth of 1% of revenue.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If current identity protection industry–with it\u2019s ineffective credit monitoring, database deletion, lost wallet and stolen funds reimbursement and other nice-sounding services needs to be destroyed, what should be rebuilt in its place?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would a rebuilt, effective, identity protection industry look like?<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It starts with accepting the reality that your data is never safe on any online database.  We need to create new solutions that allow consumers to stop giving out their data to so many different businesses.  At the same time, we need to allow these businesses to verify customers in order to prevent fraud.  Many companies are working on solutions in this area, leveraging the latest mobile phone capabilities, new Blockchain technologies, and more.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Better technologies than today\u2019s identity protection are part of the solution.  Greater personal awareness and responsibility for managing our identity is required as well.  In the meantime, stop using identity protection that doesn\u2019t work 99.9% of the time.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the author<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rob Shavell is the co-founder and CEO of <\/span>Abine.com<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, The Online Privacy Company.  Abine offers <\/span>DeleteMe<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span> for removing information made public about you online and of <\/span>Blur<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, the only password manager and digital wallet that protects passwords, payments and privacy.  Abine\u2019s solutions have been trusted by over 25 million people worldwide.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not just Equifax.  The entire industry is full of itself, corrupt, and hawking services with close to zero value.  It\u2019s hard to find the perfect words, but the best descriptor for current identity protection is probably simple: \u201cinsurance fraud\u201d. The problem of managing our identity online is real \u2013 we live increasingly digital lives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":685,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"class_list":["post-407","data-breaches","type-data-breaches","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/data-breaches\/407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/data-breaches"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/data-breaches"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joindeleteme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}