The poor person is denied a car loan. It was already the cheapest car they could find, and they don't have the money to fix the old car. They can't take time off work to go to the bank to fight the fraud, but it doesn't matter because they've already been fired due to not having a way to get to work anymore. Before they can find a new job, they're evicted from their apartment for missing rent.
Tell me again how rich people are more affected by identity theft.
you're basically claiming that every company purchased by any pension (so, basically, every company) is Too Big To Fail. if taking down one medium-sized company has any noticeable effect on public pensions, then the public pensions need serious reform.
> Stealing the identity of people with few assets is a lot less profitable than stealing the identity of rich people.
to echo what the sibling comment said, this is a major problem with the continued misappropriation of the word "theft" to refer to things which cannot be physically taken (cf. intellectual property "theft"). sure, if you could literally take over the identity of a rich person, that would be worth much more than the identity of a poor person. but that's not how "identity theft" works. "identity theft" means, largely, opening accounts in someone else's name. rich people are far more likely to notice, and far more able to take action. even if I had Bill Gates's full name, date of birth, address, social security number, all financial account information (hell, half of these are public information already anyways)... I'm not going to be able to open an account in his name, and even if I was, I would almost certainly be caught immediately and sent to jail.
> The right answer is to tighten regulations around this industry so that risk gets priced into the stock which makes it less profitable over time which gives institutional investors time to reallocate with minimal shock to those who can least afford such shocks.
Here's how much Equifax has spent on lobbying the last 10 years:
2008 - 500K
2009 - 500K
2010 - 560K
2011 - 670K
2012 - 620K
2013 - 690K
2014 - 770K
Interesting what happens next considering this headline: A.Equifax Learned of Significant Cybersecurity Deficiencies in 2015
2015 - 1.02K
2016 - 1.1K
2017 - 1.07K
2018 - 1.27M
Here's the status of three bills that were introduced:
S.1815 - Data Broker Accountability and Transparency Act of 2017 Introduced 09/14/2017 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/181...
H.R.3806 - Personal Data Notification and Protection Act of 2017 Introduced 09/18/2017 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3806...
S.1816 - Freedom from Equifax Exploitation Act Introduced 09/14/2017 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/181...
As much as I appreciate the idealistic approach to regulate the markets but it clearly doesn't work. Period. It only takes a company or industry with a lot of money to essentially write their own laws.
I certainly want companies like Equifax held accountable when they break the law, but lamenting that shareholders haven’t lost money is to fundamentally misunderstand the financial system. The solution is to slowly ratchet up the unprofitably of Equifax when they do wrong so that it makes the sector less attractive over time. Simply crushing the company with a multi-billion fine would collapse the stock all at once, destroying significant percentages of pension funds which hurts the very people for whom you ostensibly feel sympathy.
In short, naïve, knee-jerk reactions are dangerous for markets and can cause widespread harm. The right answer is to tighten regulations around this industry so that risk gets priced into the stock which makes it less profitable over time which gives institutional investors time to reallocate with minimal shock to those who can least afford such shocks.