“Thank you all for coming.”
We had convened an emergency meeting of the Luddite Chip & Dip Club, to deal with the enormous Equifax “hack” of personal data recently announced in the news. In departure from tradition, we had invited an expert, Sam, to help us digest the facts.
“So what exactly happened anyway?” our chairman, Fred, wanted to know.
“Here’s the deal,” said Sam. “Equifax — one of the three big companies that track everybody’s credit and personal information — did their job so poorly that hackers got hold of home addresses, drivers’ license numbers, birthdates, even Social Security numbers of possibly 143 million Americans.”
“Yipes! That’s more than a third of all Americans!” exclaimed Gladys, Fred’s wife.
“Indeed.”
“I never asked those clowns to keep a file on me in the first place!” said George. He’s one of our founding members.
“You didn’t have to,” replied Sam. “You might never have contacted them, but someone else probably did — a department store that gave you a credit card, or a car dealer before you bought a car. For a thousand different reasons, Equifax could have this information on you — the most important information there is.”
“And they leave it out like crumbs after a picnic, for ants — or hackers — to walk away with,” concluded George. “You know what really gets me? They admitted they knew about the software flaw that allowed the hack, a full two months before it even began.”
“No!” we all gasped.
“I’m afraid George is right,” said Sam. “They were alerted in March, but the hacking happened from mid-May until July 30.”
“And that last day is the best of all,” George went on. “They finally noticed the breach on the 29th, but waited a whole day more before taking the problem offline. Twenty-four hours! In a world where things can happen in a nanosecond —do you know how many nanoseconds that is?”
“Um… how many nanoseconds in a second?” I ask Sam.
“A billion.”
“So … that’s a billion, times 60 seconds in a minute, times 60 minutes in an hour, times 24…Ouch, my head hurts.”
“The point is,” says Fred, “they acted like my cousin Morty, when he noticed that the vending machine in the break room was busted. ‘Oh, gee, we should report this,’ I told him. ‘Yeah, we sure should,’ he said. ‘Just as soon as I’ve cleaned out the candy!’ ”
“What I want to know,” asked George, “is what are they going to do about it?”
“Well,” said Sam, “they’ve offered everyone affected one year free of their credit monitoring services.”
“Oh, great! From people who monitor so poorly that this happened in the first place? That’s like getting free health care from a doctor who uses dirty needles!”
“And after the year is up?” I demanded. “I can get a new driver’s license, but am I supposed to just change my birthdate?”
“Haven’t you, already?” asked Gladys. “You can’t possibly be 39 years old!”
“I’m ignoring that. And what about our Social Security numbers? They were supposed to be the same for our entire life; the government doesn’t reissue those. Who’s going to fix that?”
“Can’t be fixed,” admitted Sam.
“This just gets better and better,” I mutter. “So how’s a person to protect herself, against these incompetents?”
“Your only real option is to ask all three agencies to freeze your credit.”
“What could the hackers do with it, anyway?” Fred asks Sam. What’s the risk, here?”
“They could steal your identity.”
“You know,” replied Fred, “every time I open a credit card statement, I find myself hoping that’s what happened – that there’s been some horrible identity theft. Because all those charges can’t possibly be real. But no; every time, it’s all just Gladys, gone shopping.”
Gladys shoots Fred a look.
“Wait!” says George. “So these crooks might pretend to be me, until my credit’s all used up?” He suddenly grins from ear to ear. “At last, some good news! I’m behind on my mortgage, my car’s been repossessed, my credit cards are all frozen — Now, finally, I can get a good night’s sleep!”
Fred clears his throat. “Gladys, I’m sorry I misjudged you. I realize now you were only shopping for the good of our family. Get on back out there, and don’t stop till the cards freeze over!”
“Can do!” says Gladys. “Come on, Judy! This is an emergency!” She grabs her purse and my arm; and as we head out the door, we hear Fred declare: “Meeting adjourned!”
