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Interesting question of what happens to the trove of data they have if Equifax does go out of business. Sensible alternatives are either regulators will have to
by TrainedMonkey 9y ago
Interesting question of what happens to the trove of data they have if Equifax does go out of business. Sensible alternatives are either regulators will have to step in or they are in too big to fail boat. Less sensible would be to do nothing and hope data does not end up in bad hands.
- maxxxxx 9y agoSomebody will buy the data. Equifax won't just disappear one day.
- jessaustin 9y agoActually it seems possible. The demand for their service won't disappear, but with their unpopularity and poor security practices someone who can might just decide to burn them to the ground. Their only assets are data. I'm sure they have offline backups, but a patient enough attack would bork the backups too. They'd probably try to continue doing business, because YOLO, but eventually enough erstwhile 850s would get their Audi leases rejected that the lawsuits would really pile up. About that time some pissed-off employees would start talking to reporters, and that would end the whole thing.
- mindslight 9y agoA company based around the mission of extracting wealth through exacerbating negotiating power imbalance is already just about the worst hands possible! Even though USG's surveillance databases have steep outcomes (eg prison/murder), they're at least targeted at an idea of discrete criminals. Commercial surveillance is an attack against literally everybody.