21st Century Wire says…
In heavy-handed fashion, consumers who want to check with Equifax to see if their personal data was exposed in a recent hack are met with a catch – they must agree to give up their legal right to sue the company.
To add insult to injury, Equifax also lobbied to kill a rule protecting victims of data breaches. Are firms like Equifax really out for our best financial interests? Or, are they simply pawns in a new epoch of data harvesting culture?
There are over 300 million Americans in our country. Over 143 million Americans credit info was hacked on #Equifax platform #RealTalk
— 🎙Wayne Dupree (@WayneDupreeShow) September 7, 2017
If you want to know if you were one of the 143 million people whose data was breached in a hack of Equifax’s data, the company has a website you can use to find out — but there appears to be a catch: To check, you have to agree to give up your legal right to sue the company for damages. The outrage that clause has now generated could complicate the company’s efforts — backed by Republican lawmakers — to block an imminent rule that would ban companies from forcing customers to agree to such provisions.
On Friday, social media users spotlighted fine print on Equifax’s website that appears to force users to agree to waive their class action rights if they use the company’s website to see if their personal data was exposed by the recent hack. It is precisely the kind of arbitration clause that a pending Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule is designed to outlaw — if Republicans and the Trump administration allow it to go into effect as scheduled later this month.
READ MORE FINANCIAL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Financial Files
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