Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. Instant-Mold-Quotes-Finish-line.jpg' alt='Instant Quote Professional 7.20' title='Instant Quote Professional 7.20' />On the Equifax Data Breach. Last Thursday, Equifax reported a data breach that affects 143 million US customers, about 44 of the population. Its an extremely. Rice Authoritys rice prices are the lowest in the industry. Myanmar Rice Prices. What Is A Fentanyl Patch Made Of on this page. Emata 5 Broken Rice 6. IRRI Polish 446. 30 Per Metric Ton. A threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant has been hacked and the attackers are claiming to have lurked on his computer for a year, collecting his login. Stock quote for Texas Capital Bancshares, Inc. Common Stock TCBI Get realtime last sale and extended hours stock prices, company news, charts, and company. QuoteSearchMenu.jpg' alt='Instant Quote Professional 7.20' title='Instant Quote Professional 7.20' />On the Equifax Data Breach. Last Thursday, Equifax reported a data breach that affects 1. US customers, about 4. Its an extremely serious breach hackers got access to full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, drivers license numbers exactly the sort of information criminals can use to impersonate victims to banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, and other businesses vulnerable to fraud. Many sites posted guides to protecting yourself now that its happened. But if you want to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, your only solution is government regulation as unlikely as that may be at the moment. The market cant fix this. Markets work because buyers choose between sellers, and sellers compete for buyers. In case you didnt notice, youre not Equifaxs customer. Youre its product. This happened because your personal information is valuable, and Equifax is in the business of selling it. The company is much more than a credit reporting agency. Its a data broker. It collects information about all of us, analyzes it all, and then sells those insights. Its customers are people and organizations who want to buy information banks looking to lend you money, landlords deciding whether to rent you an apartment, employers deciding whether to hire you, companies trying to figure out whether youd be a profitable customer everyone who wants to sell you something, even governments. Its not just Equifax. It might be one of the biggest, but there are 2,5. Surveillance capitalism fuels the Internet, and sometimes it seems that everyone is spying on you. Youre secretly tracked on pretty much every commercial website you visit. Is Wordpad Part Of Microsoft Office'>Is Wordpad Part Of Microsoft Office. Facebook is the largest surveillance organization mankind has created collecting data on you is its business model. I dont have a Facebook account, but Facebook still keeps a surprisingly complete dossier on me and my associations just in case I ever decide to join. I also dont have a Gmail account, because I dont want Google storing my e mail. But my guess is that it has about half of my e mail anyway, because so many people I correspond with have accounts. I cant even avoid it by choosing not to write to gmail. I have no way of knowing if newpersoncompany. Gmail. And again, many companies that track us do so in secret, without our knowledge and consent. And most of the time we cant opt out. Sometimes its a company like Equifax that doesnt answer to us in any way. Sometimes its a company like Facebook, which is effectively a monopoly because of its sheer size. And sometimes its our cell phone provider. All of them have decided to track us and not compete by offering consumers privacy. Sure, you can tell people not to have an e mail account or cell phone, but thats not a realistic option for most people living in 2. America. The companies that collect and sell our data dont need to keep it secure in order to maintain their market share. They dont have to answer to us, their products. They know its more profitable to save money on security and weather the occasional bout of bad press after a data loss. Yes, we are the ones who suffer when criminals get our data, or when our private information is exposed to the public, but ultimately why should Equifax care Yes, its a huge black eye for the company this week. Soon, another company will have suffered a massive data breach and few will remember Equifaxs problem. Does anyone remember last year when Yahoo admitted that it exposed personal information of a billion users in 2. This market failure isnt unique to data security. There is little improvement in safety and security in any industry until government steps in. Think of food, pharmaceuticals, cars, airplanes, restaurants, workplace conditions, and flame retardant pajamas. Market failures like this can only be solved through government intervention. By regulating the security practices of companies that store our data, and fining companies that fail to comply, governments can raise the cost of insecurity high enough that security becomes a cheaper alternative. They can do the same thing by giving individuals affected by these breaches the ability to sue successfully, citing the exposure of personal data itself as a harm. By all means, take the recommended steps to protect yourself from identity theft in the wake of Equifaxs data breach, but recognize that these steps are only effective on the margins, and that most data security is out of your hands. Perhaps the Federal Trade Commission will get involved, but without evidence of unfair and deceptive trade practices, theres nothing it can do. Perhaps there will be a class action lawsuit, but because its hard to draw a line between any of the many data breaches youre subjected to and a specific harm, courts are not likely to side with you. If you dont like how careless Equifax was with your data, dont waste your breath complaining to Equifax. Complain to your government. This essay previously appeared on CNN. EDITED TO ADD In the early hours of this breach, I did a radio interview where I minimized the ramifications of this. I didnt know the full extent of the breach, and thought it was just another in an endless string of breaches. I wondered why the press was covering this one and not many of the others. I dont remember which radio show interviewed me. I kind of hope it didnt air. Tags breaches, data collection, fraud, identity theft, national security policy, privacy, surveillance. Posted on September 1.