Equifax is a special case though. It isn't Equifax that needs to be killed, it's the concept of credit reporting agencies in general -- they inherently constitute systemic risk. The more private information is concentrated in one place, the more attractive a target it creates for attackers and the more severe the consequences of a breach.

We need to figure out a way to make data warehousing operations like this impractical so these dangerous targets no longer exist.

One good step would be to prohibit the use of social security numbers for anything other than social security.