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July 30, 2019 02:07 pm

Capital One's Breach Was Inevitable, Because We Did Nothing After Equifax

An anonymous reader shares a report: Another day, another massive data breach. This time it's the financial giant and credit card issuer Capital One, which revealed on Monday a credit file breach affecting 100 million Americans and 6 million Canadians. Sound familiar? It should. Just last week, credit rating giant Equifax settled for more than $575 million over a date breach it had -- and hid from the public for several months -- two years prior. Why should we be surprised? Equifax faced zero fallout until its eventual fine. All talk, much bluster, but otherwise little action. Equifax's chief executive Richard Smith "retired" before he was fired, allowing him to keep his substantial pension packet. Lawmakers grilled the company but nothing happened. An investigation launched by the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the governmental body responsible for protecting consumers from fraud, declined to pursue the company. The FTC took its sweet time to issue its fine -- which amounted to about 20% of the company's annual revenue for 2018. For one of the most damaging breaches to the U.S. population since the breach of classified vetting files at the Office of Personnel Management in 2015, Equifax got off lightly. Legislatively, nothing has changed. Equifax remains as much of a "victim" in the eyes of the law as it was before -- technically, but much to the ire of the millions affected who were forced to freeze their credit as a result.

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