Equifax exposed data from 143 million Americans. Last time 15Mil.

The following article is a repost (with permission) from a post by Frank Wagoner on Sept 14th

Some people may think is it no big deal when big company's are careless then YOU, YOUR Spouse, Relatives, Kids personal information is leaked to criminals.

First let me mention the population of USA is only 323 million including children as of 2016. So roughly 1 out every 2 People in the USA just had their personal info carelessly given to criminals. This beats Experians leak of 15 million last year. I like how Experian is SELLING credit protection services. Reminds me of stories where the mob sells fire insurance to businesses, and if the business failed to pay, well accidents do happen. .
Welcome to the world of identity theft.
Hope you like the new credit cards someone just applied for.
Hope you like the person who files your tax return early claiming may deductions and getting a huge tax refund. Guess how long it will take it for you to fix it with the IRS that year, and the next and the next..... Not counting how social security amounts could be corrupted.
Hope you like it when a criminal uses the info to open a bank account to write bogus checks on in your name. When the cops arrest you, you may only have to be in jail a few days. Priceless memories for a lifetime.
Did someone start collecting you social security payments, even though you are not close to retiring.
Did you remember , the data is easily sold , Over and over again?

What happens is a criminal gets a new ID with your info , but their picture? Then commits a crime, pays bail using your info on house/car as collateral, ignores going to court, warrant issued. You get a knock at the door.... Free overnight stay until you can prove you are not the criminal.

Rinse and repeat

Ok, you finally get the identity theft issues fixed, you criminal record removed, now what?

You probably will get free credit report monitoring for a couple of years from the settlement with Equafax ( the lawyers get many Million$ ).
Then what happens when that expires? The professional criminals will know when the monitoring expires... to that is a great time to do it again :P.

Now let's see what data do the criminals possibly have for 143 million Americans?
1) Every address you have ever lived at
2) Every credit card you have had
3) Every bank account you have had.
4) Every job you have had.
5) A lot more not disclosed to you but the criminals have it. Yeah.
massive amount of data like where you lived as a kid, what school you went to. Who lived with you at the same address your whole life.
To me the real kicker is the personal data the credit reporting company's keep that is not listed on a credit report.
When I request a yearly credit report from the credit agencies, they ask me some questions about me I do not even know the answer to myself, like " On January 1987 you lived at #### main st Or #### 18th street? " I lived at one then moved to the other sometime around that time. I cannot remember what happened 30 years ago! But they do have those records, and now so do the criminals. PLUS In my opinion Possibly.. US government, Russia, ISIS, Trump, Clinton, Amazon and anyone you consider not on the up and up. Is it possible for someone who escaped a unstable, violent person by moving away to be found by that person? Anyone with a short fuse you angered? Well it just got a whole lot easier for them to find people.
Last year, one of the political parties exposed their collection of data to possible simple copying from a unsecured / unmonitored web address. The data they had was just insane, like who people voted for, what they like to buy, their facebook posts, webpages they went to, personal preferences....
Personally, I expect the first entity to buy a copy of the breached data will be the US government.
According to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse data since 2005 7,674 data breaches have REPORTED to have Occurred. I doubt that number is the true amount.

Ok. What happens to Equifax from this?

Same as all data breaches. They will be sued and fined, Probably have to give free credit report monitoring for a couple of years.
My belief bare minimum punishment, Experian should be providing free credit monitoring for life, with free text and /or email notifications and all company's should be restricted from compiling additional data not
currently needed for credit reporting. It should also be made illegal for credit agencies to sell peoples information of any kind.
I wonder if some of the data breaches are done to cover-up someone at a company selling the data to the people who "broke in"
Until people actually replace the people in power who block action, nothing will change.