4 ms·

Revised headline: A year later, the vast majority of people have faced little fallout from having data about them inadvertently made public. Nearly all of the

by harryh 8y ago

Revised headline: A year later, the vast majority of people have faced little fallout from having data about them inadvertently made public. Nearly all of the dire predictions made at the time of the breach have been wrong to date.

darkerside 8y ago
Tell that to my coworker who spent all day on the phone last week fighting identify fraud with his bank. The impacts will be intermittent lightning strikes on random people at random times. To everyone else, business as usual.
- harryh 8y ago
  1) A few hours on the phone != getting hit by lightning. 2) It's still a bit early to trust the data, but so far identity theft rates do not appear to be up significantly in the aftermath of the equifax breach.
- kodablah 8y ago
  Are you saying this anecdote makes the dire predictions accurate? Or are you just saying it had > 0 effect? The parent post was talking about the former as a whole, not sure it's worth countering with the latter.
- paulcole 8y ago
  > The impacts will be intermittent lightning strikes on random people at random times. To everyone else, business as usual. And that's acceptable to virtually everyone.
  - pizzazzaro 8y ago
    Until it affects you. Then you're outraged, but too late to do anything.
- g051051 8y ago
  Can your coworker trace the identity fraud to the Equifax breach? As opposed to all of the identity fraud that happened throughout the years before the breach?
  - yebyen 8y ago
    Are you implying that, when a hurricane strikes, no one drop of water can be responsible for the resulting devastation? (When in this case, to stretch the metaphor, the droplets all had strong profit incentives related to storing and making decisions based on peoples' data, and that they were pretty demonstrably negligent at protecting their charge?) All I'm really saying is, these breaches won't ever stop if the cost of a response remains substantially lower for these companies, than the profitability of being the (ir)responsible ones and maintaining the data in a negligent state.
    - g051051 8y ago
      > > Nearly all of the dire predictions made at the time of the breach have been wrong to date. > Tell that to my coworker who spent all day on the phone last week fighting identify fraud with his bank. I'm saying that identity theft happened before the Equifax breach, and the Target breach, and the Yahoo! breach, etc. It will continue to happen. What we need is some sort of reform, like a national ID system with stronger ways to identify people (like fingerprints) and strong penalties for the criminals, not the organizations that get victimized. Note that anything like this will probably result in restricting access to credit or raising the cost of it. People like to blame the CRAs for this, but it's the businesses that don't do due diligence in verifying identity that are at fault.
      - yebyen 8y ago
        > It will continue to happen. I would like, if you are one of the entities with control over this situation, if you bet against this. How much will it cost me to get you, as a service provider, to start betting against this?
        8y ago
sehugg 8y ago
Revised revised headline: A year later, we do not have a full accounting of the impact of the data breach, but this weird blog quotes a fraud prevention company saying they saw big increases in online fraud rates: https://www.paymentssource.com/slideshow/data-fraud-after-the-equifax-data-breach https://www.paymentssource.com/slideshow/data-fraud-after-th...
paulie_a 8y ago
Slight change: "having data stolen from them due to outright incompetent security" It wasn't inadvertently, they made decisions and said "eh whatever"
- harryh 8y ago
  That's a fair change. I didn't love the use of "inadvertent" there and was struggling for the best single word adjective to use. There was definitely significant negligence on equifax's part.
cryptozeus 8y ago
Ha, how will you know how the leaked information is being used ? This is the problem, once your data is out there there is no way to know how it will be used. Everyone i know had to take active steps to lock the credit history including me. This is the major blunder they got away with..unbelievable!
yurrzz 8y ago
Since much of the information doesn't change easily it is my understanding the identity thieves will sit on the information and use it intermittently for years.
wu-ikkyu 8y ago
Identity theft is at an all time high.
tomohawk 8y ago
Put your money where your mouth is. Publish your info and see what happens. If you later have a problem, how will you be able to show that it was because you published your info?

by harryh 8y ago

darkerside 8y ago

Tell that to my coworker who spent all day on the phone last week fighting identify fraud with his bank. The impacts will be intermittent lightning strikes on random people at random times. To everyone else, business as usual.

harryh 8y ago
1) A few hours on the phone != getting hit by lightning. 2) It's still a bit early to trust the data, but so far identity theft rates do not appear to be up significantly in the aftermath of the equifax breach.
kodablah 8y ago
Are you saying this anecdote makes the dire predictions accurate? Or are you just saying it had > 0 effect? The parent post was talking about the former as a whole, not sure it's worth countering with the latter.
paulcole 8y ago
> The impacts will be intermittent lightning strikes on random people at random times. To everyone else, business as usual. And that's acceptable to virtually everyone.
- pizzazzaro 8y ago
  Until it affects you. Then you're outraged, but too late to do anything.
g051051 8y ago
Can your coworker trace the identity fraud to the Equifax breach? As opposed to all of the identity fraud that happened throughout the years before the breach?
- yebyen 8y ago
  Are you implying that, when a hurricane strikes, no one drop of water can be responsible for the resulting devastation? (When in this case, to stretch the metaphor, the droplets all had strong profit incentives related to storing and making decisions based on peoples' data, and that they were pretty demonstrably negligent at protecting their charge?) All I'm really saying is, these breaches won't ever stop if the cost of a response remains substantially lower for these companies, than the profitability of being the (ir)responsible ones and maintaining the data in a negligent state.
  - g051051 8y ago
    > > Nearly all of the dire predictions made at the time of the breach have been wrong to date. > Tell that to my coworker who spent all day on the phone last week fighting identify fraud with his bank. I'm saying that identity theft happened before the Equifax breach, and the Target breach, and the Yahoo! breach, etc. It will continue to happen. What we need is some sort of reform, like a national ID system with stronger ways to identify people (like fingerprints) and strong penalties for the criminals, not the organizations that get victimized. Note that anything like this will probably result in restricting access to credit or raising the cost of it. People like to blame the CRAs for this, but it's the businesses that don't do due diligence in verifying identity that are at fault.
    - yebyen 8y ago
      > It will continue to happen. I would like, if you are one of the entities with control over this situation, if you bet against this. How much will it cost me to get you, as a service provider, to start betting against this?
      - 8y ago

sehugg 8y ago

Revised revised headline: A year later, we do not have a full accounting of the impact of the data breach, but this weird blog quotes a fraud prevention company saying they saw big increases in online fraud rates: https://www.paymentssource.com/slideshow/data-fraud-after-the-equifax-data-breach https://www.paymentssource.com/slideshow/data-fraud-after-th...

paulie_a 8y ago

Slight change: "having data stolen from them due to outright incompetent security" It wasn't inadvertently, they made decisions and said "eh whatever"

harryh 8y ago
That's a fair change. I didn't love the use of "inadvertent" there and was struggling for the best single word adjective to use. There was definitely significant negligence on equifax's part.

cryptozeus 8y ago

Ha, how will you know how the leaked information is being used ? This is the problem, once your data is out there there is no way to know how it will be used. Everyone i know had to take active steps to lock the credit history including me. This is the major blunder they got away with..unbelievable!

yurrzz 8y ago

Since much of the information doesn't change easily it is my understanding the identity thieves will sit on the information and use it intermittently for years.

wu-ikkyu 8y ago

Identity theft is at an all time high.

tomohawk 8y ago

Put your money where your mouth is. Publish your info and see what happens. If you later have a problem, how will you be able to show that it was because you published your info?