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PSA: no matter what, Equifax may tell you you've been impacted by the hack

Posted by $ nickursis 6 years, 6 months ago to Government
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I am now believing these guys are not producers, but looters in disguise. They manufactured a system over time that has business addicted to their "credit scores" that profess to be accurate representations of your "trustworthiness" (if so why does someone who pays all their bills on time, never having a bad mark, rate a score of "675", and thus get 18% interest offered to them, because of that score? One would think paying your bills is the one thing a lender needs to know...) Thats same system professed a need for every bit of data you ever had to identify yourself, then they allow their most valuable material to be stolen en masse, and their top 3 executives dump al their stock days before the announcement? Toa dd insult to injury, if you check your "status" it appears dead people, Dumbocrap voters, Russian citizens, and Mickey Mouse, all had their data stolen, so sign up for our free credit monitoring (by a company they, the people who caused the issue, own). The weadd the fact you just unknowingly signed away your right to sue, by agreeing through their use clause, to arbitration only. These guys have got looting tuned to a fine science and make a great companion to the Federal Government....
SOURCE URL: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/psa-no-matter-equifax-may-010153057.html


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  • Posted by ycandrea 6 years, 6 months ago
    I always wondered who gave these companies permission to farm my personal information in the first place?
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    • Posted by $ 6 years, 6 months ago
      Thats the scam, no one did. They just started doing it in the 60's. This is what happens when a bunch of "professors" produce some algortithim they say accurately reflects a persons trustworthiness. Now they try to make more money selling all your data in various ways, along with Google, MS and major websites. I got turned down by Farmers Insurance for Home and Auto because of it, yet I have nothing wrong or negative, and they use that as proof you are "a risk". Employers screen people with it now as well. And just try to get an error corrected!
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  • Posted by ProfChuck 6 years, 6 months ago
    This is one of the reasons I don't have any credit cards and have no intention of getting one. If I can't afford if I don't buy it.
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    • Posted by LibertyBelle 6 years, 6 months ago
      I have never had a credit card, either. (But I did once sort of use one. I went to Minnesota to see my dying father, and my sister agreed to finance the trip on her credit card, so I went; later, I got enough cash to send her the payment for it).
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  • Posted by GaryL 6 years, 6 months ago
    Consumers have no choice in either of these 3 credit reporting industries. I say they are all a scam. We use a CC exclusively all month every month and pay the bill in full every month often between 3-5 thousand dollars and have never paid a dime in interest. We bought over $80 K in new cars last year for cash with zero payments and when I checked my credit score I rated 725. Pure BS! We owe no one any debts at all and 725 is the best they can rate us at.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 6 months ago
      "We owe no one any debts at all and 725 is the best they can rate us at."
      The industry calls you a "deadbeat". They want you to buy their product, debt. People not purchasing their product is of no interest to them except that they're potential new purchasers.

      BTW, I don't hold it against them at all for wanting to sell their product. I don't even care if they make a little game where they size up how favored a customer you are. They're providing a valuable service for willing customers. They're free to make a figure-of-merit game out of promoting their product if they want.

      They try to convince people, though, that they have a benchmark for responsible behavior. A much, much better benchmark for good financial management is building wealth for yourself. Actual wealth is infinitely more important than the banking industry's opinion of you as a potential customer.
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      • Posted by GaryL 6 years, 6 months ago
        You are completely correct. Some years back when we were up to our ass with car payments and a mortgage but making half what we make now we were rated at 804 but working very hard to reach no debt. These companies can kiss my ass but I do like when I have so many points earned they have to send me gift cards even though they made nothing in interest from me.
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 6 months ago
          "I do like when I have so many points earned they have to send me gift cards"
          They collect a fee form merchants in the 3% range and then return half of it to consumers in bonus rewards of some form. The merchant gets to avoid the problems of keeping so much cash on hand. They also get the chance that the consumer will swipe the card and not think as hard as he would turning over hard-earned bills. The bank gets the chance that a consumer who would not walk into a bank and ask for a loan might accidentally find himself in credit card debt.

          On our last vacation we took out a wad of cash that we wanted to spend. It made it so easy to watch the bills go down as we came to the end of the vacation. It actually felt like we got more value for our money just by being aware. One merchant gave us a discount. If we had used cards, we would have had to check online or add them up. That would have worked. But cash is so easy. It keeps track of itself. If I had never heard of card payments, it's not a product I would ever have sought out.
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          • Posted by GaryL 6 years, 6 months ago
            Correct again CG! With a trip to the bank to get cash being over 30 miles and all income being direct deposit the card is just so easy. I do see it differently than you describe because at the end of every month the bill is real cash but never more than we can pay immediately upon receiving the bill. It is not the way I would prefer to do things but it works for us. I learned the hard way with the first wife who had a CC at every store she shopped in and $20K in debt that I paid off right after burning all the cards. I am quite sure the CC company looks upon me as a loss in every respect and as a result they ding my BS credit rating which in all reality is meaningless as long as I don't require any real credit.
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            • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 6 months ago
              "I learned the hard way with the first wife who had a CC at every store she shopped in and $20K in debt that I paid off right after burning all the cards."
              The same thing happened to me, except we were living together and had a wedding date next year when I discovered she was running up high-interest debt and lying about it. It was for every assortment of fancy candles, nail polish, etc. I dodged a bullet.
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              • Posted by GaryL 6 years, 6 months ago
                Ha! I actually learned 2 lessons with that one. CCs are very bad and you just can't fix stupid. Divorce after just 2 years was way cheaper and to this day she is still in debt up past her ears with 2 more Xs.
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  • Posted by ewv 6 years, 6 months ago
    The New York Attorney General required that Equifax remove from its Terms of Service the provision that you can't sue Equifax if you use their search to find out if your personal information is claimed to have been made public or to enroll in the "free monitoring" for a year. Both were reported as triggering the 'no sue' provision, but the problem is more extensive than that.

    I first looked at their page advertised as telling you if you are affected and found that it required signing up for the "free" monitoring. A few days later at the page for searching the 'dark web' I found links to three long documents on 'privacy policy', 'terms of use' and 'ad tracking', all of which allows them to track you and sell information even if you only look at their web site.

    Why would anyone sign up for "free" monitoring when everything they do tracks and sells information about you, the product? Being monitored for "free" is being promoted as a benefit. Everyone run like lemmings to be monitored for "free" on top of what they are already doing. The same company that engages in surveillance is now offering more for free and we're supposed to believe it's something different and we're not the product this time -- "never let a good crises go to waste".

    It took them six weeks to publicly admit that private information on over a hundred million people had been exposed, so you didn't even know to watch out for it -- while their top "executives" were selling off stock in advance. We didn't sign up for their "service" or provide them with information, yet they collected it on their own and then exposed it, and don't want to be accountable for it. Now they exploit it to herd the product -- us -- into more surveillance advertised as "free".

    The Equifax web site now assures that it "won't happen again" because they have contracted with security experts. Don't they know about barn doors and horses? Do they think that we don't? Why didn't they concern themselves with the security before it happened instead of after?

    It seems that they have no concern over exposing data on people at all as long it is they who are doing the exposing by selling it and not hackers who don't pay them for it.

    What kind of James Taggart/Orren Boyle cronies go into this line of "work"? "Executives" with no thought of production but who happened to get into the line of "managing" other people for high salaries, stock, and a plush office? The guy who tried to sell the Brooklyn Bridge had nothing on these clowns. "Get your free 30 lashes here! Free lashing and beatings! Line up here while it's still free!"



    .
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  • Posted by scojohnson 6 years, 6 months ago
    They do track your payment history. Paying minimums indicates risk of financial stress, as does excessive use of credit available. In general, you don't want to use more than about 15% of revolving credit, or carry long term balances on revolving accounts.

    Installment stuff doesn't affect it much, other than short term hits when a new loan is opened until a good history is established.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 6 months ago
    "if so why does someone who pays all their bills on time, never having a bad mark,"
    [Sarcasm]The best thing to do is get a credit card, pay it down over 12-18 months. Along the way get a car loan. Keep a mortgage the whole time. If you are making a big purchase, borrow the money for it and pay it off. Keep your total debt-servicing payments near 48% of your income and your mortgage payment close to but under 33% of your income. [/Sarcasm]
    The sarcastic response is actually true. Using their product will indeed make them like you. BTW, having me design circuit boards for you on a regular basis will raise your "score" with me. What a joke.

    I submit the 675 score does not hurt you. It's most important if you're trying to get a poorly collateralized loan. Whether you pay 18% or 10% for a loan with no collateral, it's a bad deal for you anyway. If you're buying a home with 20% down or a commercial property with 40% down, you will get the same rate as someone with a high score. Even if the loan is not collateralized, if the party you're doing business with has a brain and digs in beyond the three-digit score and sees you always pay as agreed, it doesn't matter.

    The arbitration clause doesn't matter much, either, because I wouldn't waste my time suing them. Just don't do business with them (unless it's a free benefit). They consider the banking industry their customers. The people they keep track of they call consumers.

    As you say, it's pretty close to looting in disguise.
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    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 6 months ago
      You are the product, not the customer. Likewise for Facebook and a lot more.
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      • Posted by Jujucat 6 years, 6 months ago
        True. I got rid of my facebook account and am now working to rid myself of Google. It's not easy, but it's still possible.
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        • Posted by ewv 6 years, 6 months ago
          Good to get rid of facebook and much of google. Unfortunately everything they have collected is still there, still being merged with other databases.

          It's hard to escape google scanning your email even without a gmail account because so many others you communicate with use it.

          For accessing social media in read-only mode you can set up accounts with no information added, but you will be surprised to see what shows up in ad displays, revealing how they are tracking your connection and merging information. It helps to use a vpn connection and//or the tor browser for some of what you access.
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          • Posted by Jujucat 6 years, 6 months ago
            Yeah, all good info. I do use a VPN but there are issues with that too. What do you think about the darknet? I started heading that direction a while back but got distracted away from it.
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            • Posted by ewv 6 years, 6 months ago
              I don't know what you mean specifically by the darknet. The "dark web" usually refers to website and other resources hidden from public use (and often used for criminal activities) such as the onion network or private links. It doesn't help with accessing the normal kinds of websites we visit. If you mean private connections for personal communications that is a possibility, but a lot of or most hacking and surveillance target compromised machines at the ends of the network.
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              • Comment deleted.
                • Posted by ewv 6 years, 6 months ago
                  You should have warned us that just looking at that information is bait for the FBI and not to go there without already having a darkweb connection.
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                  • Posted by $ 6 years, 6 months ago
                    Why would just looking at a wikipedia article and a website about it be bait for the FBI? I am not seeing the connection, in that the dark web is not an illegal thing, it is just another facet of the internet. Used for nefarious purposes, sure, but there are also legitimate uses. It is just it is built mainly for privacy, which of ocurse, is specifically what government does not want you to have. I can see it in relation to terrorists and drug dealers, but most, if not all the crypto currencies (which keep spawning more and more), work in it for that reason. So, if you are not a terrorist, or drug dealer, but are using computers for mining crypto currencies, that makes you bad?
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                    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 6 months ago
                      Darkwebnews, with its suggestions for Silk Road and links to much more, is not wikipedia.

                      There are a lot of good reasons to seek more privacy on the internet, and a lot of reasons, including good ones, that the FBI doesn't like. The IRS in particular doesn't like private currencies.

                      The government is carrying on a surveillance war against tor to break it. It's ironic that after the initial computer science networking research it became a project supporting dissidents, international human rights supporters, journalists, etc., funded by the Office of Naval Research and DARPA.
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                      • Posted by $ 6 years, 6 months ago
                        So a government program is monitoring a government program. That sounds about right. Time to delete cookies....that would be their main tracking tool first...Although just looking into if for more information is not a crime...yet....
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                        • Posted by ewv 6 years, 6 months ago
                          There is more than just cookies you can guard against in your browser. You can make encrypted dns queries, limit the use of javascript, block unwanted extraneous connections, and blacklist known unwanted ip addresses, all in addition to using a vps.

                          But all of it comes with a price of experimenting, configuring, and troubleshooting when something you want doesn't work right because some limit is too strict.
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                  • Posted by $ 6 years, 6 months ago
                    So, I deleted it to make sure I do not point anyone to something that could be sinister. Thank you for pointing that out, I am not suspicious enough.....
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                    • Posted by ewv 6 years, 6 months ago
                      There is good information on both the wikipedia and the darkwebnews pages you linked to, for both legitimate privacy purposes and just to learn something what the rest of it is about. You weren't advocating illegal activity.
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                      • Posted by $ 6 years, 6 months ago
                        I know, but I take your warning seriously, and I cannot guarantee a fellow gulcher that going to the site may not trip some secret flag. Best left alone unless you have a very secure vpn.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 6 months ago
    I couldn't replicate this with some random names and numbers. I thought about entering my actual info and decided against it.
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    • Posted by $ 6 years, 6 months ago
      Well I did, but I am going for a real time 24/7 monitor, my company, Intel, already provides us freed monitoring through another company (after Blue Cross was hacked and our family info was stolen a couple years ago), but they seem very slow to respond (7 days sometimes). So, I am looking into them.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 6 years, 6 months ago
        "I am going for a real time 24/7 monitor,"
        My perception is Intel gives top pay and benefits so they can get the best people. It's great they provide it for free. I purposely ignore the bureaus because I think they've worked out what borders on a scam: "We'll provide free literature to kids about responsible money management. That begins with our opinion of you. You can pay us to find out our opinion of you. We can't tell you the proprietary formula on how to improve our opinion, but it involves your purchasing banking products as much as possible."

        I don't have a problem with their products, debt and deposit accounts. I don't have a problem with their keeping a record of consumers' reputations. My problem is they sell to kids and unsophisticated adults the idea that using banking products and keeping tabs on their opinion is just part of being a responsible person.

        I wouldn't want my reputation tarnished by an inaccurate report that I failed to pay someone as agreed, but I don't care that much unless the opinion comes from a court that can issue a judgment. I am not seeking to borrow money or enter deals with people who see the credit bureaus' records as completely reliable.

        I give references in my industry from time to time. I don't promote the idea that any responsible person should give my company at least some business to companies affiliated with me and should monitor my opinion at all times.
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