It seems to me that the Equifax data breach is quite the egregious breach of business ethics. Most of us do not have a business connection with them; they are in the business of collecting information about the consumers of the nation, summarizing it, and then selling that information to various other entities.
You do not contract with them to do this, and you cannot control that activity.
In case you’re not familiar with this scandal, here’s a randomly selected story on it from the AARP:
With credit-reporting firm Equifax revealing that hackers may have stolen financial and consumer data on at least 143 million customers in the U.S., it’s quite possible that your personal information — including birth date, Social Security number, driver’s license and address — could fall into the hands of criminals.
Equifax said that it hasn’t found evidence of unauthorized activity on its core consumer or commercial credit-reporting databases. But criminals could use the treasure trove of personal information acquired in the breach to apply for credit cards and loans in your name, access your bank accounts and establish a phony presence online with email and social media accounts.
Not because you made a mistake, mind you. But because they made mistakes.
Well, this sort of problem, as a class, is causing disruptions to American society. It is preventable and is the result of criminal neglect.
It’s not an accident. Someone – some entity, singular or plural – balled things up.
And how to fix it? I think someone with a corral full of lawyers should step up to the plate and bring a suit that asks for the dissolution of Equifax as the remedy to the injury to the class of consumers who had their data revealed and are now vulnerable to identity theft and other crimes.
Speaking as a software engineer, the industry has hid for far too long from responsibilities such as these. Industry should have its teeth kicked in over these scandalous, preventable mistakes, because that’s how this works – someone steps in a pothole and breaks their neck in the courthouse, and everyone else finally realizes you can’t dump mercury into the lake any longer. I’ve written about Underwriter’s Software Labs before, a fictional entity that shouldn’t be. How much longer before someone with the resources realizes that software development cowboy style is not resulting in shining examples of software?
Maybe it’s time for the insurance industry to get involved again.
