[AnotherUnixGeek]

Companies insist on obtaining highly confidential information from customers, and then skate after suffering massive security failures which release that highly confidential information to random hackers. Equifax spewed out the credit information of millions of people in 2017, and the only remedy they provided the victims was a year's free subscription to their own online security product - the security product of a company which obviously knows nothing about basic data security.

There need to be severe liability consequences, not worthless class-action suits which provide victims with coupons and other garbage. Both Republicans and Democrats are too busy covering the butts of these companies and not trying to protect the interests of their constituents - Equifax continues to get big government contracts, by the way.

[utax]

Well thank goodness i will receive Free Credit Monitoring for a year!! And i feel great knowing that if there is a class action lawsuit over this some attorneys will make $$Millions.

[George from New England]

As Clark Howard says, DO NOT GIVE YOUR SSN to any medical outfit. ANY. Under their medical oath, that cannot deny you treatment.

[wastedyears]

I have epilepsy. And?

[Retvet]

This just proves medical records should not be on line.

[I want the USA back]

Why do they design systems so that this much data can be accessed at one time by one user?

Each individual user must have limited access. Any users with superuser access must be restricted to logging on ON the premises, and with strict logging and real-time monitoring.

It way past time to trash the SSN as it is now. For starters, it has no check digit. Should be longer, contain letters and/or numbers, and be checked every time it’s used for internal consistency. But what would the systems designers know about that?

SSN should not be used as the universal individual citizen identifier, as it is now. It was a retirement account number! Ah, but the politicians in charge at the time knew damn well what they were doing, and knew what it would become. Luckily, they’re all dead now.