>"The Internal Revenue Service signed a $7.25 million contract with Equifax last month. The no-bid contract, first reported by Politico, is for Equifax to provide the IRS with taxpayer and personal identity verification services. The contract stated that Equifax (EFX, -1.34%) was the only company capable of providing these services to the IRS, and it was deemed a “critical” service that couldn’t lapse."
The IRS in the US needs Equifax to provide tax payer and verification services? Seriously what does that even mean? The IRS bas no other way to verify citizens?
In the US people generally file a change of address when they move in order to automatically receive mail at their new address.
The fact that the IRS granted Equifax a 7 million dollar contract amounts to the US tax payer paying Equifax to put their identity at risk and cause them harm. It really boggles the mind.
If the IRS is using Equifax for proper address verification as the OP states, then that information is already available via the USPS which is a government agency with real oversight.
- Do you recognize this street name?
- Have you bought from this store?
- How many mortgages did you co-sign?
>Chief information officer Girza said the IRS sent inspectors to make sure no IRS data was compromised in the Equifax breach
Here's a question: who owns your drivers license? Here's a hint: it isn't you. Can you "own" you mailing address? Copyright and trademark it, make everyone ask permission from you before they write it down? What about your salary? Should your employer have to ask every time they use your salary number in some way, say in aggregate statistics or reporting?
What about information about how you interact with your credit card company? Who owns that, you, or the credit card company? Do the two of you have some kind of joint ownership?
We've made some of these decisions about health data and it has far-reaching consequences, some of them undesirable. It's also been very difficult to enforce. Do you want to extend that kind of regime to every piece of information about a person? Society might grind to a halt, we would be inundated with virtual and physical pop-ups asking "your landlord wants access to your phone number to place a call to you, will you allow it?" And what process would mediate this access control anyway, and how would we trust it?
I would grant the landlord access to contact me while I still have a business relationship with her.
This dire scenario you are trying to paint frankly doesn't sound that bad. I don't need a company to know my entire life's history to exploit my past to deliver a targeted ad.
>Society might grind to a halt, we would be inundated with virtual and physical pop-ups asking "your landlord wants access to your phone number to place a call to you, will you allow it?"
That is how messaging works on many newer systems like Facebook or Instagram, and people appear to find that level of control desirable, not annoying. The only reason the phone system works with public numeric IDs that anyone can dial is that whole thing is a relic from 50 years ago.
"Personal data means data relating to a living individual who is or can be identified either from the data or from the data in conjunction with other information that is in, or is likely to come into, the possession of the data controller. This can be a very wide definition depending on the circumstances."
"Right to change or remove your details
If you discover that a data controller has details about you that are not factually correct, you can ask them to change or, in some cases, remove these details.
Similarly, if you feel that the organisation or person does not have a valid reason for holding your personal details or that they have taken these details in an unfair way, you can ask them to change or remove these details.
In both cases, you can write to the organisation or person, explaining your concerns or outlining which details are incorrect. Within 40 days, the organisation must do as you ask or explain why they will not do so."
https://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/Data-Security-Breach-Code...
The GDPR is a solid step in the right direction, and a model for a better approach to privacy.
[1] https://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/A-guide-to-your-rights-Pl...
At the end of the day you do consent to this through participating in the banking/credit system.
While the data may not exist without you, you are not the one recording it. Why does it not make sense to assign ownership to the one recording/creating the data in the first place?
Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly like having my picture taken without my explicit consent. In the end, consent is all rather arbitrary because it's not like you can choose not to live in human society on Earth.
Fingers crossed someone with Equifax's data dump starts dumping the data of Equifax senior management.
[1] Hat tip to patio11 on the language; don't use "I demand", professionals use "I require"
So, personally identifiable information (PII) is a less-debatable phrase and more legally defensible.
In the first case, if you do business with a bank then the data from that belongs to the bank as much as it belongs to you. They are reporting their information, namely that you interacted with them. Thus, that information would belong to them.
In the second case, it is personally identifiable information - which is something that's difficult to dispute. This also gives you interest in that data which is a stronger point to stand on.
As mentioned before, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. However, I have extensive experience with the justice system due to my career and have taken quite a few classes concerning the law.
Also, the word 'shall' has stronger implications than 'will.' I am not sure why but it is handy to know. The defendant will comply vs. the defendant shall comply.
Best of luck.
Complaint was with Equifax, Inc. I specified I required my credit file be removed, as Equifax has had several egregious security breaches and is incapable of properly securing my PII [1]. They have 15 days to respond.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_inform...
You also can't prevent them from reporting information about you to Equifax.
Anyways, you aren't really hurting anyone by denying yourself the ability to get credit, you're only hurting yourself.
The point isnt to prevent any credit reporting.. but to prevent equifax specifically from earning money.
And no one is "denying themselves the ability to get credit" by refusing to unfreeze an equifax report. If the lender doesn't want to use one of the other credit agencies, then most people can find another lender. Those businesses need to know they'll lose business as long as theyre loyal to equifax.
It is unfortunate we don't have more leverage... this does leave a lot of avenues open for Equifax to continue making money. But every bit helps.
lol, yeah, good luck with that when you go to get a mortgage.
Mortgage lenders pull all 3 reports, not just one. There is a ton of laws around mortgage underwriting that need to be followed. They technically may be able to underwrite a mortgage with only two credit reports but I doubt any mortgage lender actually will or if they did they'd be charging outlandish interest rates. If you're hiding a report they will assume its because you're hiding something negative that's on the report.
Things don't work like you would like in the real world, only in theory. You are delusional if you believe Chase having to pull Experian instead of Equifax once every million credit applications is going to somehow effect Equifax's bottom line.
If your landlord uses a background checking service that uses Equifax and the background check service comes back with "frozen report" and you say "I demand you use a different background checking service that doesn't use Equifax" then your landlord is just going to say lol and rent to the person who isn't being extremely difficult, as its a sign you're going to be a difficult tenant.
If any company uses Equifax, you'll then be denied credit or they'll ask you to unfreeze it.. either way, you can complain to them, and make it clear you won't work with Equifax.
Of course, in practice, this will mean you'll get denied credit from any company that has a contract with Equifax.