It will be years if not decades before all the consequences of the recent hack on American consumer's data will be completely sorted out, but this is not stopping a $70 billion class action lawsuit being filed on Sept. 8 one day after the cyber intrusion took place.
One day after Equifax announced (more than one month after it itself had learned) that its systems had been hacked, resulting in up to 143 million social security numbers, names, addresses, driver’s license data, birth dates, some credit card numbers and pretty much all other critical personal data being leaked and currently for sale somewhere on the dark web, the company whose job is, ironically, to protect the credit and personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans has been hit with a monster class-action lawsuit seeking as much as $70 billion. - Zerohedge
Yet what is perhaps the most shocking, and even reminiscent of the Wells Fargo scandal from earlier this year, is the news that has surfaced of Executives within Equifax not only knowing about the hacks weeks in advance of their public announcement, but also them dumping shares long before they made public the breach of up to 143 million American's financial data.
As you probably heard, yesterday the US-based credit reporting agency Equifax announced a massive cyberattack that affects as many as 143 million consumers.
Names. Birth dates. Addresses. Social Security Numbers. Even some credit card numbers were stolen.
Literally over one third of the entire US population is at risk of identity theft now thanks to Equifax’s bungling.
Bear in mind this is the THIRD TIME in 16 months that Equifax has been hacked– there was another breach earlier this year, and another in May 2016.
Even worse– this wasn’t an overnight attack. Hackers spent MONTHS probing the Equifax network, burrowing deeper into the system and gaining access to more and more data with each attempt.
Yet Equifax’s defenses failed to detect anything.
Finally on July 29, a whopping TEN WEEKS after the attacks started, Equifax realized that something was wrong.
Senior executive responded to the data breach by… selling their stock.
Yes, in the days following their discovery of the hack, three of the company’s executives sold nearly $2 million worth of stock.
Bear in mind, these “insider sales” have to be reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission, so there is a public record every time a company executive sells stock.
These executives would have known this, and that the public would find out they sold their stock right after the data breach was discovered. – The Sovereign Man
Perhaps its time for the Supreme Court to take its ruling that corporations are considered as individuals and start indicting them with criminal charges, and as an added bonus, include the indictment of every executive of those companies for aiding and abetting in the criminal activity of the corporation.