Credit bureaus shouldn’t exist

The revelations of a security breach at Equifax should come as no surprise to anyone. How often have we heard similar stories? Equifax’s failure to protect our private information, however, is not the real issue. I would ask, instead: Why is this company allowed to have this information in the first place? Why are any of the credit bureaus allowed to operate?

Three very special for-profit companies are allowed to collect our most private information. They do this so they can then sell that information, for their own financial gain. For some reason, we have come to accept this absurd intrusion as the norm and pretend to be shocked when they fail to protect our information. Indeed, it is all for sale to the highest bidder anyway; the only difference here is that the hackers took that information without paying Equifax.

We need to challenge our lawmakers to turn down their lobbying effort and outlaw these credit bureaus, for our security, for our economy and for our basic right to privacy.

This story was originally published September 20, 2017 at 3:48 PM with the headline "Credit bureaus shouldn’t exist."