Equifax already displayed a staggering level of incompetence but like a Billy Mays commercial there’s more:
The official Equifax Twitter account encouraged people to visit a knock-off website that mocks the company’s security practices instead of the site the company created to warn of a massive data breach. That recent breach exposed personal details for as many as 143 million US consumers.
In a tweet on Tuesday afternoon, an Equifax representative using the name Tim wrote: “Hi! For more information about the product and enrollment, please visit: securityequifax2017.com.” The message came in response to a question about free credit monitoring Equifax is offering victims. The site is a knock-off of the official Equifax breach notification site, equifaxsecurity2017.com. A security researcher created the imposter site to demonstrate how easy it is to confuse a legitimate name with a bogus one. The Equifax tweet suggests that even company representatives can be easily fooled. The tweet was deleted late Wednesday morning, more than 18 hours after it went live.
It’s almost as if large credit agencies like Equifax aren’t held accountable for screwing up and therefore aren’t motivated to do an effective job. Weird.
Statists continue to claim that government is necessary to deliver justice when large corporations like this screw up. However, I’m still waiting to see the government do anything more than give a corporation like this a minor slap on the wrist for fuck ups of this magnitude. Hell, I’m still waiting to see the government give Equifax a stern talking to over this series of amateur mistakes. As far as I can tell, government seems exists primarily to protect large corporations like this from competitors that would currently be tearing it apart if there was a free market.