Rate My Credit

The Equifax hack(s?) are highlighting more than the security of the institutions that are asking us to trust them with our personal information.  It is bringing into question the entirety of how these institutions identify us and thereby assign us credit.

Even the cursory, headline-scanning research that most of us do will show that the requirements for obtaining a new line of credit are ludicrous.  All you need is a Photo ID, Social Security Number (doesn't need to be yours), a matching birth date and address.  That's it.  And with the SSN and a little work, you can get the Photo ID.

Walk into most retailers (car dealerships, furniture stores, WalMart, Target, etc.), spend fifteen minutes filling out an application and then go to town.

This needs to change.  Even the White House agrees.  For what that's worth.

Equi-Fu**ed

I've written about on-line privacy before and the utter helplessness surrounding it for the individual citizen.  The Equifax hack highlights this again and takes it to new and more horrifying heights.

Equifax, one of the three credit reporting agencies used by every US entity that needs to decide if any one person is trustworthy, had 143 million records stolen out of their supposedly secure database.  That is roughly two-thirds of the population with a credit report (approximately 246 million people aged fifteen and up).  Bottom line: your information has been exposed.

There have been many data hacks in the past, from Target to Sony to G-Mail and on.  This one is worse.  While those others have had some information, often including social security numbers and credit card information, Equifax makes its business collecting all of that information: credit card payment histories, utility payment histories, mortgages, employment, bank accounts and more.  On everyone who has ever opened any of those.  They collect all of this so that they can help banks and employers and others decide if you will pay your bills on time.  If you are someone who is responsible.

But how can any of that be trusted if the company collecting it proves not to be responsible?

Avast Your Content

This last week, a couple of news items knocked me out of the stratosphere of the post-work society and back to reality.  That is because both items hit me where it hurts: in the content I love.

First up, there is the news that HBO has been hacked and someone is trying to blackmail them by threatening to release Game of Thrones episodes ahead of official release.  Plus allegedly damning emails.  After the Sony "The Interview" hack of 2014 which is rumored to have cost Sony around $100 Million, companies have taken threats like this seriously.  Unless the hackers don't actually have what they say they have or think that what they have is more critical than it is (see "Burn After Reading"), as appears to be the case here.  HBO is not reported to be negotiating in any serious manner with the cyber thieves.

Secondly, Disney has announced that they are severing ties with Netflix and will be pulling their content from that service in 2019.  They intend to set up their own streaming service for their content which may include content from ABC and ESPN, both owned by Disney.  Netflix responded by buying a comic book publisher, Millarworld, which is most known for the "Kick-Ass" series.

What do these two news items have in common?  Well, they are both about money.  They are both about control.  And they are both about content piracy.  And content piracy is about breaking free of money and control.