The culpability of data brokers

[kallend 2,146]

Excellent article in the NYT about the Equifax data breach and the role of data brokers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/opinion/equifax-breach-china-hacking.html

"........

........

Using the personal data of millions of Americans against their will is certainly alarming. But what’s the difference between the Chinese government stealing all that information and a data broker amassing it legally without user consent and selling it on the open market?

Both are predatory practices to invade privacy for insights and strategic leverage. Yes, one is corporate and legal and the other geopolitical and decidedly not legal. But the hack wasn’t a malfunction of the system; it was a direct result of how the system was designed.

Equifax is eager to play the hapless victim in all this. Don’t believe it. In a statement praising the Justice Department, Equifax’s chief executive, Mark Begor, deflected responsibility, highlighting the hack as the work of “a well-funded and sophisticated military” operation. “The attack on Equifax was an attack on U.S. consumers as well as the United States,” he said.

While the state-sponsored attack was indeed well funded and sophisticated, Equifax, by way of apparent negligence, was also responsible for the theft of our private information by a foreign government.

......."

[BIGUN 1,481]

3 hours ago, kallend said:

theft of our private information by a foreign government.

But HEY!! We got free credit monitoring.   </sarcasm>