Gods are Never Regulated

They are the three Gods in my life. They determine my worth in life. With their scrutiny every purchase and the very quality of life is determined by their approval and acceptance. Their names are Equifax, Transunion and Experian. These three determine your credit worthiness. The worst part besides their power over your spending habits is that they are not really regulated by any branch of our government so no wonder there was a breach that gave all your personal information out there to who knows who. Who is going to slap the people of Equifax on the wrist? No One!

Equifax Inc. is a private company that trades on the Stock Market at about $100 a share. Their business is a consumer credit reporting service. They collect information on about 800 million people and tell companies if they should give you loans on cars and products.  They will give your personal profile to about 88 million   businesses worldwide upon request. Equifax waited a month before they revealed that hackers breached their security and have stolen the personal data on probably you and me. 143 million Americans privacy is gone. Ok If you have really bad credit, who cares they can know all my bad news but those with loans out there do not want their privacy out there to anyone who wants it.

We can complain about the three Gods all we want to but getting them to change their judgmental ways is not going to happen by anyone. Why aren’t THEY regulated as long as they determine what we can do financially? Lots of things get hacked now a days all the time including our Election. Cyber Security is a big problem. Everything we do is on the internet or buried in some companies data files. Equifax is technically a financial institution. The Federal Trade Commission demands that Equifax “design and implement a safeguards program.”  NO ONE IN OUR GOVERNMENT ACTUALLY ENFORCES THAT REGULATION!

It is because of   a Regulatory gap. Trump should be getting on these Gods case and stop annoying people with walls, religious bans and self- profiteering with the Russians. And stop playing so much Golf Mr. Leader of the Free World. We need our credit reports to be safe and secure. The FTC is supposedly responsible for enforcing the safeguards rule. The CFPB, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been doing most of the supervision of Equifax and the other Gods. The focus was on whether the credit reports were fair and accurate not on what cybersecurity measures the Gods are taking to monitor safeguards on your information.

We have the FDA that monitors that our food and drugs are safe. NO ONE IS MAKING SURE THAT OUR CREDIT REPORTS ARE SAFE. No wonder this disaster happened. It was waiting to happen. Investment bankers actually have regulators that observe and work in their offices and audit their performance.  NO ONE IS WATCHING EQUIFAX. Farms and ranchers have USDA inspectors that check the food they produce. Everyone else has someone else watching them to insure that they are doing a good job. That is why our buildings and roads and food and drugs are safe in America!!! Somebody safeguard our credit Congress!!! Where are my damn worn out protest shoes?

Some Federal Agency needs to be imbedded with the credit unions to secure our personal data. These Gods have personal information on just about every American adult. In the unlikely event that a credit company has been found to break the rules the only thing we could do is request that the Federal Trade Commission gets them to agree to fix the problem. I say fine the bastards! Put them out of business instead of having the power to put me out of business with a bad credit report. Equifax is facing lawsuits from angry customers who can afford to sue the giant company but that is not enough. We need real Federal Regulations especially that they are private companies. They don’t even have to pay a fine to our government since no one is really their boss.

Expect this kind of assault on your information to continue without proper legislation governing these predatory companies that intrude on every financial aspect of your life.