avoid the public scrutiny of themselves and the industry They'd probably give it to them for free if that would avoid a huge public disclosure. Though the pr

avoid the public scrutiny of themselves and the industry They'd probably give it to them for free if that would avoid a huge public disclosure. Though the proposed scenario is impossible, if Equifax really did lose most of their database, asking users to type in their current name/address/SSN (or buying it from a competitor) wouldn't help them, the valuable data is in the credit history, and without that data, Equifax has no business, so they'll go bankrupt. Even if they asked consumers for the data, few people know all of the data that the credit agencies have on them.