Elaine Ou, Columnist

The Equifax Hack Didn't Have to Be This Bad

Using Social Security numbers makes us vulnerable.

September 8, 2017 at 2:15 PM UTC

Elaine Ou is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a blockchain engineer at Global Financial Access in San Francisco. Previously she was a lecturer in the electrical and information engineering department at the University of Sydney.

Outdated technology.
Photo: Social Security Administration

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If your personal information is ever compromised in a data breach, the hacked company might send you an apology letter with an offer of free identity theft protection from a credit-reporting agency. But what happens when the reporting agency is the one that gets breached?

This week, Equifax said that its systems had been accessed by intruders, potentially affecting 143 million U.S. consumers. Equifax Chief Executive Richard Smith called the event "disappointing," which seems like an understatement for a company whose core business is collecting people's credit information. The stolen information includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and driver’s license numbers. Get ready to see a lot of credit card fraud.