Executives at Equifax won’t get their 2017 bonuses
EQUIFAX apologised again for its massive data breach in a Friday morning earnings call but also touted plans to build a new credit monitoring tool to give consumers more control over their data.
Chief Executive Paulino do Rego Barros Jr outlined plans to rebuild trust after saying that Equifax’s senior leadership team will forgo “incentive compensation” – essentially, bonuses – for 2017.
He added that Equifax will release a free tool to allow anyone to lock their account to prevent others from viewing credit data or opening accounts in their name. (A credit lock, however, affords users fewer legal rights than a credit freeze, even in the event of a hack.) That tool is set to launch at the end of January.
He added that Equifax is working with other companies to create something similar for the whole industry. “We believe the time is right for an industry-wide solution that provides consumers a way to substantially improve visibility and control to personal credit data for free, for life,” he said.
Equifax currently has a credit monitoring service that it’s offering free to all 145.5 million consumers affected by the breach; registration remains open through January 31. The ser- vice allows users to monitor and even freeze their accounts. The firm’s chief financial officer, John W Gamble Jr, said during the earnings call that approximately 1.5 percent to 2 percent of all Equifax files now have a lock or freeze placed on them.
Overall, Equifax has said that roughly 30 million people have visited the website it set up to inform consumers about the breach. But it has not reached out to individuals affected by the breach personally – leaving questions about how many people could still be unaware that their sensitive information was stolen, as Equifax tries to move on.
A recent survey from financial site CreditCards.com found that 71 million American adults hadn’t heard anything about the breach more than a month after it was first announced, despite heavy news coverage.