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143M Americans Affected and by Census'[0] count, there are ~327M Americans. Chances are, if you're an adult American you are impacted. Even if you did not au

143M Americans Affected and by Census'[0] count, there are ~327M Americans. Chances are, if you're an adult American you are impacted. Even if you did not authorize Equifax's "services", a third party most likely did it for you, and you are impacted. Note that your credit score or lack thereof is often used to deny housing and (for generally unsubstantiated reasons,) employment. The fact that Equifax is not held accountable is one of the biggest data-related atrocities of the modern era. [0]: https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/

khana 9y ago
Absolutely correct.
MaxBarraclough 9y ago
> Note that your credit score or lack thereof is often used to deny housing and (for generally unsubstantiated reasons,) employment. Not defending Equifax, but this is misleading. Credit checks are what enable lending of this sort in the first place.
- mijamo 9y ago
  No. France for one does not have a similar system available and lending still works well.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    How does France go about determining if someone is a good credit risk who pays their bills on time?
    - mulmen 9y ago
      Call the bank and ask?
    - ubernostrum 9y ago
      It really is amazing how until the current three credit reporting agencies came long, nobody in the history of humanity had managed to obtain a loan. We owe them a lot for inventing the entire idea of lending money.
      - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
        We used to have debtors' prisons instead.
        grasshopperpurp 9y ago
        Used to?
      - derekp7 9y ago
        It's a bit deeper than lend/not lend. Interest rates are determined in part by risk -- higher risk means higher rates are required to cover defaults across a given risk pool. Without granular risk assessments, I would think that the interest for everyone would be a bit higher, as it has to be enough to cover defaults. Is that the case? That is, in locations with detailed credit reporting, do people with very good credit end up with lower interest rates than borrowers in locations that don't have a credit reporting system?
        ubernostrum 9y ago
        Well, in recent-ish history many places had usury laws and even enforced ideas like Christians not charging interest to other Christians. There are still places in the world today which have functioning credit markets despite prohibitions on charging interest.
      - astura 9y ago
        Since this apparently isn't obvious to you, creditors have different interest rates and different loan terms for different risk pools. Your risk pool is determined, in part, by your history of borrowing and paying back money. It isn't that lending doesn't exist without credit history, it's everyone gets the same shitty terms and shitty interest rate and banks are much more conservative in lending.
    - lurker456 9y ago
      1. there is less reliance on credit for day to day spending. 2. banks are liable, so they're more careful. I don't get offers by mail for credit cards, and the card I do have has stricter limits. 3. a national ID system 4. specifically for real estate, separate regulation exists. You cant buy or sell real estate nor take out a mortgage without going through a notary (heavily protected profession), who ensure that the real estate and the loan to pay for it remain linked.
      - davidw 9y ago
        Notaries, at least in Italy, are a plague on the system. https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21646801-highly-regulated-profession-fights-preserve-its-privileges-princes https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2164680...
        conanbatt 9y ago
        Notaries are Dante's 8th layer of hell.
        lurker456 9y ago
        I'm not convinced they're worse than an Italian version of Equifax.
        davidw 9y ago
        They're awful in their own, different way. Did you follow any of the SRLS stuff? Guess who wailed and gnashed their teeth that barbarian hordes would descend on Italy if notaries weren't allowed to collect thousands of Euros for registering limited liability companies?
    - mbesto 9y ago
      I've lived in Germany and the UK. Their reliance on credit cards is drastically different from the US.
    - avip 9y ago
      You could, for example, put sufficient loan guarantees in place.
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      Not from France, but elsewhere in the EU there generally are registries of bad debts (with libel-like protections requiring the information on them to be true or removed). So the bank looks at your income, possibly your expenses, and whether you've been defaulting in the past. If it's your bank, which it usually is, then they can probably mine your transaction history in more detail to decide how trustworthy you are.
  - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
    Interesting. A quick perusal online and it seems they get by with bank statements/pay slips/tax documents to show that you're on the level. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-theres-no-credit-score-company-in-France/answer/Thomas-Dupont-1 https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-theres-no-credit-score... I'm surprised that works at all. I wonder if it's quantitatively less 'effective'. (A quick Google didn't turn up much on that question.)
    - d4mi3n 9y ago
      A company I work at more or less does the same thing, albeit in conjunction with a credit report. We're a marketplace lender operating internationally, and (from what I hear through the grapevine) it turns out the accuracy of credit reporting data outside of the US can be, put nicely, inaccurate. Aside from that, if you want a business process for vetting credit to work across geographies, you can't be dependent on a particular agency or report being available for a specific locale. You _can_ however, almost always depend on a business keeping books and paying taxes.
    - the-dude 9y ago
      How about better job security?
      - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
        Not a replacement for a healthy lending.
        the-dude 9y ago
        Are you aware in Europe in general, there is much much less buying on credit?
        MaxBarraclough 9y ago
        How about mortgages?
  - rconti 9y ago
    For certain values of "works well". I mean, I'm not defending the ratings agencies here, nor ignoring the real problems with cheap credit, but from an interest rate perspective, I don't think there's a better place to borrow money than the US. Head and shoulders better/cheaper than anywhere else I'm aware of.
    - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
      Why is it better?
      - Vindicis 9y ago
        It has it's roots in the USD being the currency required to buy Oil (Petrodollar) and sort of builds from there. Some searches should give the information pretty easily, but it's a rather complex topic to break down into a quick comment. Happy reading! Edit: Apparently some people are too lazy to educate themselves beyond anything in the comment section. Here, perhaps clicking a link is within your grasp. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/072915/how-petrodollars-affect-us-dollar.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/072915/how-petro...
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - hectormalot 9y ago
      Not sure. Mortgage rates in the us are 3.5-4.5% (https://www.bankrate.com/new-jersey/mortgage-rates.aspx https://www.bankrate.com/new-jersey/mortgage-rates.aspx), while I can get a mortgage in the Netherlands for less than half of that (1.8-2.5%, https://www.abnamro.nl/nl/mobile/prive/hypotheken/actuele-hypotheekrente/hypotheekrente-overzicht.html https://www.abnamro.nl/nl/mobile/prive/hypotheken/actuele-hy...) (I actually just got a mortgage and it was pretty painless: 1 week from 1st contact to contract)
      - astura 9y ago
        I don't speak Dutch and Google translate doesn't work for that page for some reason, but I strongly believe you're comparing apples to oranges. What's the terms to get a 1.8% mortgage? How much loan to value (down payment) is required and how long is the loan term? Fixed or variable rate? What is the maximum debt to income ratio? Income requirements? Is that APR or APY? I believe, again I don't speak Dutch, the longest loan term on that page is 10 years. If that's the case, then you'd have to compare it to a 10 year mortgage in the US, not a 30 year like you did. Edit: I was holding my phone in a way I couldn't see the whole table. It appears to me that a 30 year mortgage with less than a 15% down payment is 4.40%.
- hankhill 9y ago
  Employment is a sort of lending? Your argument doesn't even make sense.
- eldridgea 9y ago
  I believe the parenthetical saying "generally unsubstantiated reasons" is referring to the "employment" part, not the "housing" part. Equifax (and their competitors) like to sell their credit data to employers under the guise that those with good credit scores will be good employees, despite basically no data backing up this claim.
  - delinka 9y ago
    It's not necessarily "good credit scores == good employees" but maybe "here's a metric/collection of data we can use to hire The Right Kind Of Person" using whatever definition company management has quietly decided upon.
- jaredklewis 9y ago
  How is it misleading? Credit checks ARE often used by landlords and employers to vet potential renters/hires. You can argue credit scores have value, but the parent’s observation is not misleading.
Feniks 9y ago
Money is free speech bro. Should have donated to the GOP. I guarantee you Equifax did.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  I think I know what you're trying to say here and I probably even agree, but you should know that lots of people try to elevate the tone of political discourse when it's on topic here, so you're going to get down votes. Perhaps an better thing to say is: "It is very disappointing that the GOP policy on the CFPB and data privacy is to destroy the former and ignore the later, rather than letting govenrment-mandated corporations with government-granted advantages run roughshod over the American public without any form of accountability. The GOP and Trump administration are playing a very dangerous game in their transparent attempt to pay back donors, and I will certainly do everything I can to help unseat GOP senators and house reps in my state if this is their policy for the Federal Government. If they're going to grant privileges to companies I demand they also require accountability."
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Your suggestions simply repackage the same basic facts with fancy words. And the facts get downvoted, even though they are irrefutable: the investigation was initiated by a Democratic appointee, it is now being ended by a Republican appointee. Meanwhile, Equifax has donated to Republicans, almost exclusively, in the last elections: https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2018&strID=C00143867 https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2018&strI... (click on "Party split by Cycle").
    - openasocket 9y ago
      I think it's a bit specious to blame Republicans in general for the halt to this investigation rather than Mick Mulvaney, at least with current information. This is a breaking story, so let's give Republican Congressmen a few days to react. If they remain silent and don't loudly complain about this, then we can put some blame on the Republicans in Congress as being complicit in this.
krisives 9y ago
Isn't there a class-action lawsuit, can't those 143M people in theory get in on that?
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  If most of the adult population of an entire country is affected by something, is a class-action lawsuit really the best way to deal with that? What about a Federal program?
  - bb88 9y ago
    The CFPB is a Federal program. It's the thing which is supposed to keep companies from doing this.
- bobwaycott 9y ago
  I believe Equifax is currently facing 240 state and class-action suits. Still doesn’t seem the appropriate way to handle an entire nation being affected by their failure.
  - yourapostasy 9y ago
    Unless those actions pool resources and forces, Equifax stands a good chance of defeating most of them in detail. String most along, cherry-pick the most likely to prevail against (with a combination of lobbying, legislation, politicking, marketing, and legal maneuvers), win or stalemate those, then work their way down the list with those precedents in their negotiating back pocket.
- mixedmath 9y ago
  If I recall correctly, US Congress passed a resolution [1] shortly after the Equifax breaches became public that essentially restricted the capabilities of people to sue Equifax [2]. [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-resolution/111/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-res... [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/24/congress-votes-to-disallow-consumers-from-suing-equifax-and-other-companies-with-arbitration-agreements/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/24/congress-votes-to-disallow...
dmix 9y ago
The article says in addition to this one agency it will still be investigated by the FTC and is being investigated by EVERY state's Attorney Gerneral in the country. They are far from getting away unscathed. It's also not clear what actions the consumer protection agency may still pursue. This article only mentions that they held off on doing an on the ground investigation of how they do data storage. Still plenty of options available to them without that...
- darepublic 9y ago
  To me anything short of equifax's complete replacement by one or more similar services means they got away with it.
  - pfisch 9y ago
    I guess. The reality is they own so much information and so many processes that basically no matter what happens this company is going to zombie on in some way or another. Like they are forced to sell their assets, ok I'm sure those assets end up with basically the same shareholders they have now and basically the same people working on it under a new branding. Probably some leadership changes but the same offices with a new banner on the wall next to the same people in the same cubicles. Great. Or maybe they move offices a few buildings over. Its all the same garbage. Serious monetary punishment could possibly force reform, but just destroying equifax will do nothing and honestly the name "equifax" is just a word you would be replacing with another meaningless word that is basically the same thing.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  Without that, it is one less thing that happens. Unless many states actually change laws to have similar protections, I doubt such a company will change much - just a few new "security features" and hope the public forgets once the next major thing happens. Now, if they were stopping because of a criminal investigation has started, great. Otherwise, what message is the federal government sending to its people? "hahaha, shouldn't have trusted them. Of course you had the choice, you could have gone without those services that use Equifax. It's your own fault and we aren't helping"? And to me, that is the bigger issue.
benevol 9y ago
It becomes clearer every day now: When Trump said "I will drain the swamp", he was simply not aware that he is the swamp that will be drained shortly and once and for all.

khana 9y ago

Absolutely correct.

MaxBarraclough 9y ago

> Note that your credit score or lack thereof is often used to deny housing and (for generally unsubstantiated reasons,) employment. Not defending Equifax, but this is misleading. Credit checks are what enable lending of this sort in the first place.

mijamo 9y ago
No. France for one does not have a similar system available and lending still works well.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  How does France go about determining if someone is a good credit risk who pays their bills on time?
  - mulmen 9y ago
    Call the bank and ask?
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    It really is amazing how until the current three credit reporting agencies came long, nobody in the history of humanity had managed to obtain a loan. We owe them a lot for inventing the entire idea of lending money.
    - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
      We used to have debtors' prisons instead.
      - grasshopperpurp 9y ago
        Used to?
    - derekp7 9y ago
      It's a bit deeper than lend/not lend. Interest rates are determined in part by risk -- higher risk means higher rates are required to cover defaults across a given risk pool. Without granular risk assessments, I would think that the interest for everyone would be a bit higher, as it has to be enough to cover defaults. Is that the case? That is, in locations with detailed credit reporting, do people with very good credit end up with lower interest rates than borrowers in locations that don't have a credit reporting system?
      - ubernostrum 9y ago
        Well, in recent-ish history many places had usury laws and even enforced ideas like Christians not charging interest to other Christians. There are still places in the world today which have functioning credit markets despite prohibitions on charging interest.
    - astura 9y ago
      Since this apparently isn't obvious to you, creditors have different interest rates and different loan terms for different risk pools. Your risk pool is determined, in part, by your history of borrowing and paying back money. It isn't that lending doesn't exist without credit history, it's everyone gets the same shitty terms and shitty interest rate and banks are much more conservative in lending.
  - lurker456 9y ago
    1. there is less reliance on credit for day to day spending. 2. banks are liable, so they're more careful. I don't get offers by mail for credit cards, and the card I do have has stricter limits. 3. a national ID system 4. specifically for real estate, separate regulation exists. You cant buy or sell real estate nor take out a mortgage without going through a notary (heavily protected profession), who ensure that the real estate and the loan to pay for it remain linked.
    - davidw 9y ago
      Notaries, at least in Italy, are a plague on the system. https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21646801-highly-regulated-profession-fights-preserve-its-privileges-princes https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2164680...
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        Notaries are Dante's 8th layer of hell.
      - lurker456 9y ago
        I'm not convinced they're worse than an Italian version of Equifax.
        davidw 9y ago
        They're awful in their own, different way. Did you follow any of the SRLS stuff? Guess who wailed and gnashed their teeth that barbarian hordes would descend on Italy if notaries weren't allowed to collect thousands of Euros for registering limited liability companies?
  - mbesto 9y ago
    I've lived in Germany and the UK. Their reliance on credit cards is drastically different from the US.
  - avip 9y ago
    You could, for example, put sufficient loan guarantees in place.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    Not from France, but elsewhere in the EU there generally are registries of bad debts (with libel-like protections requiring the information on them to be true or removed). So the bank looks at your income, possibly your expenses, and whether you've been defaulting in the past. If it's your bank, which it usually is, then they can probably mine your transaction history in more detail to decide how trustworthy you are.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  Interesting. A quick perusal online and it seems they get by with bank statements/pay slips/tax documents to show that you're on the level. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-theres-no-credit-score-company-in-France/answer/Thomas-Dupont-1 https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-theres-no-credit-score... I'm surprised that works at all. I wonder if it's quantitatively less 'effective'. (A quick Google didn't turn up much on that question.)
  - d4mi3n 9y ago
    A company I work at more or less does the same thing, albeit in conjunction with a credit report. We're a marketplace lender operating internationally, and (from what I hear through the grapevine) it turns out the accuracy of credit reporting data outside of the US can be, put nicely, inaccurate. Aside from that, if you want a business process for vetting credit to work across geographies, you can't be dependent on a particular agency or report being available for a specific locale. You _can_ however, almost always depend on a business keeping books and paying taxes.
  - the-dude 9y ago
    How about better job security?
    - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
      Not a replacement for a healthy lending.
      - the-dude 9y ago
        Are you aware in Europe in general, there is much much less buying on credit?
        MaxBarraclough 9y ago
        How about mortgages?
- rconti 9y ago
  For certain values of "works well". I mean, I'm not defending the ratings agencies here, nor ignoring the real problems with cheap credit, but from an interest rate perspective, I don't think there's a better place to borrow money than the US. Head and shoulders better/cheaper than anywhere else I'm aware of.
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    Why is it better?
    - Vindicis 9y ago
      It has it's roots in the USD being the currency required to buy Oil (Petrodollar) and sort of builds from there. Some searches should give the information pretty easily, but it's a rather complex topic to break down into a quick comment. Happy reading! Edit: Apparently some people are too lazy to educate themselves beyond anything in the comment section. Here, perhaps clicking a link is within your grasp. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/072915/how-petrodollars-affect-us-dollar.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/072915/how-petro...
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - hectormalot 9y ago
    Not sure. Mortgage rates in the us are 3.5-4.5% (https://www.bankrate.com/new-jersey/mortgage-rates.aspx https://www.bankrate.com/new-jersey/mortgage-rates.aspx), while I can get a mortgage in the Netherlands for less than half of that (1.8-2.5%, https://www.abnamro.nl/nl/mobile/prive/hypotheken/actuele-hypotheekrente/hypotheekrente-overzicht.html https://www.abnamro.nl/nl/mobile/prive/hypotheken/actuele-hy...) (I actually just got a mortgage and it was pretty painless: 1 week from 1st contact to contract)
    - astura 9y ago
      I don't speak Dutch and Google translate doesn't work for that page for some reason, but I strongly believe you're comparing apples to oranges. What's the terms to get a 1.8% mortgage? How much loan to value (down payment) is required and how long is the loan term? Fixed or variable rate? What is the maximum debt to income ratio? Income requirements? Is that APR or APY? I believe, again I don't speak Dutch, the longest loan term on that page is 10 years. If that's the case, then you'd have to compare it to a 10 year mortgage in the US, not a 30 year like you did. Edit: I was holding my phone in a way I couldn't see the whole table. It appears to me that a 30 year mortgage with less than a 15% down payment is 4.40%.
hankhill 9y ago
Employment is a sort of lending? Your argument doesn't even make sense.
eldridgea 9y ago
I believe the parenthetical saying "generally unsubstantiated reasons" is referring to the "employment" part, not the "housing" part. Equifax (and their competitors) like to sell their credit data to employers under the guise that those with good credit scores will be good employees, despite basically no data backing up this claim.
- delinka 9y ago
  It's not necessarily "good credit scores == good employees" but maybe "here's a metric/collection of data we can use to hire The Right Kind Of Person" using whatever definition company management has quietly decided upon.
jaredklewis 9y ago
How is it misleading? Credit checks ARE often used by landlords and employers to vet potential renters/hires. You can argue credit scores have value, but the parent’s observation is not misleading.

Feniks 9y ago

Money is free speech bro. Should have donated to the GOP. I guarantee you Equifax did.

KirinDave 9y ago
I think I know what you're trying to say here and I probably even agree, but you should know that lots of people try to elevate the tone of political discourse when it's on topic here, so you're going to get down votes. Perhaps an better thing to say is: "It is very disappointing that the GOP policy on the CFPB and data privacy is to destroy the former and ignore the later, rather than letting govenrment-mandated corporations with government-granted advantages run roughshod over the American public without any form of accountability. The GOP and Trump administration are playing a very dangerous game in their transparent attempt to pay back donors, and I will certainly do everything I can to help unseat GOP senators and house reps in my state if this is their policy for the Federal Government. If they're going to grant privileges to companies I demand they also require accountability."
- matt4077 9y ago
  Your suggestions simply repackage the same basic facts with fancy words. And the facts get downvoted, even though they are irrefutable: the investigation was initiated by a Democratic appointee, it is now being ended by a Republican appointee. Meanwhile, Equifax has donated to Republicans, almost exclusively, in the last elections: https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2018&strID=C00143867 https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2018&strI... (click on "Party split by Cycle").
  - openasocket 9y ago
    I think it's a bit specious to blame Republicans in general for the halt to this investigation rather than Mick Mulvaney, at least with current information. This is a breaking story, so let's give Republican Congressmen a few days to react. If they remain silent and don't loudly complain about this, then we can put some blame on the Republicans in Congress as being complicit in this.

krisives 9y ago

Isn't there a class-action lawsuit, can't those 143M people in theory get in on that?

leggomylibro 9y ago
If most of the adult population of an entire country is affected by something, is a class-action lawsuit really the best way to deal with that? What about a Federal program?
- bb88 9y ago
  The CFPB is a Federal program. It's the thing which is supposed to keep companies from doing this.
bobwaycott 9y ago
I believe Equifax is currently facing 240 state and class-action suits. Still doesn’t seem the appropriate way to handle an entire nation being affected by their failure.
- yourapostasy 9y ago
  Unless those actions pool resources and forces, Equifax stands a good chance of defeating most of them in detail. String most along, cherry-pick the most likely to prevail against (with a combination of lobbying, legislation, politicking, marketing, and legal maneuvers), win or stalemate those, then work their way down the list with those precedents in their negotiating back pocket.
mixedmath 9y ago
If I recall correctly, US Congress passed a resolution [1] shortly after the Equifax breaches became public that essentially restricted the capabilities of people to sue Equifax [2]. [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-resolution/111/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-res... [2]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/24/congress-votes-to-disallow-consumers-from-suing-equifax-and-other-companies-with-arbitration-agreements/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/24/congress-votes-to-disallow...

dmix 9y ago

The article says in addition to this one agency it will still be investigated by the FTC and is being investigated by EVERY state's Attorney Gerneral in the country. They are far from getting away unscathed. It's also not clear what actions the consumer protection agency may still pursue. This article only mentions that they held off on doing an on the ground investigation of how they do data storage. Still plenty of options available to them without that...

darepublic 9y ago
To me anything short of equifax's complete replacement by one or more similar services means they got away with it.
- pfisch 9y ago
  I guess. The reality is they own so much information and so many processes that basically no matter what happens this company is going to zombie on in some way or another. Like they are forced to sell their assets, ok I'm sure those assets end up with basically the same shareholders they have now and basically the same people working on it under a new branding. Probably some leadership changes but the same offices with a new banner on the wall next to the same people in the same cubicles. Great. Or maybe they move offices a few buildings over. Its all the same garbage. Serious monetary punishment could possibly force reform, but just destroying equifax will do nothing and honestly the name "equifax" is just a word you would be replacing with another meaningless word that is basically the same thing.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
Without that, it is one less thing that happens. Unless many states actually change laws to have similar protections, I doubt such a company will change much - just a few new "security features" and hope the public forgets once the next major thing happens. Now, if they were stopping because of a criminal investigation has started, great. Otherwise, what message is the federal government sending to its people? "hahaha, shouldn't have trusted them. Of course you had the choice, you could have gone without those services that use Equifax. It's your own fault and we aren't helping"? And to me, that is the bigger issue.

benevol 9y ago

It becomes clearer every day now: When Trump said "I will drain the swamp", he was simply not aware that he is the swamp that will be drained shortly and once and for all.