Equifax is all show, no action for customers

FACEBOOK FACEBOOK.COM/ USATODAYOPINION

A breach at the credit-reporting agency Equifax exposed sensitive financial data of nearly 150 million Americans to cyber thieves.

So let me get this straight, my information was given to Equifax — not by me. It lost my data and now would like me to pay them to protect them? How about a law that makes my information frozen by default, and can be released when I authorize it? Curt Gibson

How can you correct having critical information leaked and now forever out in the wild? How about lifetime credit monitoring? How about a compensation every time someone is hit with identity theft? How about free credit freeze options for all three credit-reporting agencies? No, Equifax can only think of giving people one lousy year of free service from its own company to protect us — when it couldn’t protect us in the first place. This is just so we can pay Equifax’s executives after their mistake? I hope this takes down the entire industry. Christopher Fluke

The appropriate response would be to allow those affected by the breach to have the ability to freeze and unfreeze their credit, and receive semiannual credit reports, or at least fraud alerts (at no cost), for the rest of their lives. Why are credit-reporting agencies able to make a dime off of you protecting your own information? That’s baffling to me. Mike Stevens

What gets me is that company executives sold stocks before releasing the breach information to the public. Last I remember, that’s the very definition of insider trading. But of course they will claim they didn’t know before they sold their stocks. Larry Rom

The change I want to see is Equifax CEO Richard Smith and the other executives involved in jail for years. James John