Even Equifax’ apology to customers came in for lambasting.
SAN FRANCISCO — After announcing that as many as 143 million Americans may have had their information stolen in a data breach, credit reporting company Equifax has struggled to deal with the fallout and the growing anger of people caught up in breach.
Consumers reported difficulties getting through to the company’s call center over the weekend, including long waits, being disconnected after waiting and call center hours that didn’t correspond to Equifax’ own statements.
These came after the company issued a statement on Friday saying it had added an additional 2,000 staffers to its call center.
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On Monday Equifax issued a new statement saying that Hurricane Irma could be impacting some of its call center wait times and it has arranged to ramp up agents quickly “to replace agents impacted by the storm.”
However would-be callers continued to report on Twitter that they were having difficulty getting through on Monday.
This is surprising to many, who note the breach was discovered on July 29,40 days before it was announced on September 7.
“While I don’ t want to badmouth Equifax, they seem to have some issues. They knew it was going to happen. They knew the release date. They were in control of the situation. They could have made all these things work right the first time, ” said Itzik Kotler, chief technology officer at SafeBreach, a company that helps firms develop breach and remediation scenarios.
Another source of anger was the company’s statement of apology for the breach, which it called “a disappointing event for our company.”
“Did you just say ‘disappointing’ ?” wrote the authors of SorryWatch, a website that tracks and analyzes apologies.
“Exposing the potentially life-screwing private data of 143 million Americans to hackery requires more substantive expressions of self-flagellation, ” they said.
The problem with the Equifax breach is that while it has the potential to harm close to half of all Americans, the company’s actual customers are businesses such as retailers, insurance firms, banks and utilities who want to check the credit of potential customers — not the individuals whose data the company has been collecting since 1899.
“The people they actual harmed, the people they have all this data on, they don’ t really care about because we’ re not their customers, ” said Susan McCarthy, one of the SorryWatch co-authors.
“We didn’ t sign up with them and we don’ t have the option of saying, ‘Oh, I won’ t have a credit report any more,’ ” she said. “What are we going to do, move to a new state and change our birthdate?”
Those that aren’ t thrilled with Equifax’ response are turning to lawsuits to vent their displeasure. As least 23 proposed class-action lawsuits have been filed since Friday with more expected.
The relatively large number of new lawsuits against Equifax that seek class-action status signal the high legal stakes over the potential for identity-theft losses by millions of Americans whose personal data was exposed.
The cases also show an eagerness by plaintiff law firms to stake swift claims on behalf of consumers who eventually might be in line for a share of either a court judgment against Equifax or a settlement by the company.
Those that aren’ t thrilled with Equifax’ response are turning to lawsuits to vent their displeasure. As least 23 proposed class-action lawsuits have been filed since Friday with more expected.
The relatively large number of new lawsuits against Equifax that seek class-action status signal the high legal stakes over the potential for identity-theft losses by millions of Americans whose personal data was exposed.
The cases also show an eagerness by plaintiff law firms to stake swift claims on behalf of consumers who eventually might be in line for a share of either a court judgment against Equifax or a settlement by the company.
Contributing: Kevin McCoy
