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Equifax Breach Will Fuel Identity Theft Remediation Debate

BY Angela R. Matney
November 01, 2017

On Sept. 7, 2017, Equifax Inc. announced to the world that from May 2017 through July 2017, it had experienced a cyberattack that had compromised the security of the personal information of 145.5 million U.S. consumers. Equifax's initial offer to provide affected individuals with a year of its own credit monitoring service in response was met with skepticism and downright incredulity by those who maintained that the suggested “fix” was hardly enough to compensate consumers for the fallout they were bound to experience as a result of the incident.

In the wake of suits filed against Equifax by consumers, businesses and governmental units, courts will have to grapple with the question of what remedies are appropriate. These issues are not unique to the Equifax incident, but the scope of the breach will undoubtedly lead to more debate than ever before.

Questions regarding the effectiveness of credit-monitoring and other traditional breach remediation measures are not new. On Mar. 30, 2017, just a few short months before the Equifax breach, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a 70-page report concerning the effectiveness of identity-theft services (including credit monitoring, identity monitoring, identity restoration and identity theft insurance) as remedies for data breach victims (GAO-17-254).

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