4 ms·

What hit to their stock price? It’s the same price it was a year ago. We’ve all made computer mistakes like this, but the stakes are different. If I forget to

What hit to their stock price? It’s the same price it was a year ago. We’ve all made computer mistakes like this, but the stakes are different. If I forget to update a framework and as a result a bunch of cat pictures leak, that’s not a big deal. If I do the exact same thing and leak important private info with financial consequences for nearly every American, that’s a much bigger deal. They data they collected needed to be stored in a bulletproof fashion. You could argue that this is impossible, but that just means the data should not have been collected at all. The calls to destroy the company seem pretty reasonable to me. This is a classic case of an externality. Equifax cost a shitload of people a bunch of money, and they’re bearing very little of the cost. Arguably they’re actually profiting from it by selling fraud protection services. The only question to me is: just how much did they cost the American people? Whatever it is, they should bear the entire cost. And I bet that cost is more than the company is worth.

ISL 9y ago
GP implies that EFX was purchased sometime after the fall and before the present day, which would have yielded an apparent profit.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Right, but they also said that they've already been punished by the hit to their stock price, which doesn't look like it's the case at all.
  - mikestew 9y ago
    We're deep enough in that I don't know who the parent of who anymore, but to be clear I bought in-the-money calls at around $93 (the hit to their stock price), and sold the contracts when it hit around $111 (seemed to have leveled off). But you're probably not talking about me, as I'm the one pissed off that those calls made money, not thinking they've been punished. It should have hit $93 and stayed there.
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Heh! To clarify, my bit about the stock price being the same as a year ago is in reference to cloakandswagger stating "Equifax should receive some punitive action (arguably already delivered by the hit to their stock price and the public floggings from the congressional hearings)."

ISL 9y ago

GP implies that EFX was purchased sometime after the fall and before the present day, which would have yielded an apparent profit.

mikeash 9y ago
Right, but they also said that they've already been punished by the hit to their stock price, which doesn't look like it's the case at all.
- mikestew 9y ago
  We're deep enough in that I don't know who the parent of who anymore, but to be clear I bought in-the-money calls at around $93 (the hit to their stock price), and sold the contracts when it hit around $111 (seemed to have leveled off). But you're probably not talking about me, as I'm the one pissed off that those calls made money, not thinking they've been punished. It should have hit $93 and stayed there.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Heh! To clarify, my bit about the stock price being the same as a year ago is in reference to cloakandswagger stating "Equifax should receive some punitive action (arguably already delivered by the hit to their stock price and the public floggings from the congressional hearings)."