IRS tax bods tell Americans to chill out about Equifax

So the IRS is saying BOHICA and get used to it?

Still haven't figured out the profile on people who were affected

I wasn't affected and I checked for my mom and dad as well as they also weren't affected. We all have great credit scores, multiple credit cards, and a mortgage so it isn't like we don't use credit.

The only thing I can think of is that we haven't opened any new credit accounts for a few years - no new credit cards, car loans, mortgage refinances, etc. Maybe that kept us out of that list of 143 million people?

I agree with the IRS guy, I think it is virtually certain someone has stolen my personal information including SSN from somewhere already, and surely that's true of a lot of those affected by the Equifax breach. Most of us won't ever have identity theft issues because there's a limited market for identity theft. If there were tens of millions of cases of identity theft in a year, trying to manage that the current way would quickly become untenable.

At that point, companies would no longer issue credit without further proof I am who I say I am beyond my name, address, and SSN. They'd probably require appearing before a notary who could check my ID - ideally someone at my local bank branch who might even know me. While showing an ID, which can of course be faked, and appearing at my local bank branch doesn't guarantee someone there might know me, requiring personal appearance at all raises the bar and at least keeps foreign fraudsters out of the game. Those in the US who try to play would significantly increase their chances of being caught by showing up somewhere that has a lot of security cameras. Today it is almost impossible to get caught so it is a lot safer of a crime to commit.

already had their information

this, combined with the latest contract award has a certain smell. But then, he wouldn't be THAT stupid to draw attention to their "special special relationship" (if any) with equif(...)s, would he?

What's the problem?

I've already changed my fingerprints, my retina and asked my mother to change her maiden name.

'The United States Internal Revenue Service has said that citizens affected by the Equifax breach need not panic, because it probably didn't reveal anything that hasn't already been stolen and the agency has tooled up to deal with fraudulent tax claims.'

That statement is going to make everybody feel so much better.

This is news?

"IRS tax bods tells Americans to chill out about Equifax

Your personal data was probably already in crims' hands".

Isn't that a tautology? The IRS probably know what data they have...

Talk about moronic thinking

I guess he wouldn't mind then, if someone put all of his information on Pastebin.

The difference about the information Equifax and other companies collect to determine risk is the HUGE amount of information they collect.

They typically have information such as political party, how often you show up to vote, make/model/year, etc. about the past several vehicle purchases you've made, home ownership information, some health data, where you travel, how you travel, your spending habits, where you shop... etc. The list is huge.

These companies collect so much information on an individual, that if something new comes up.. they create a new category immediately and start collecting.

So while hackers may have some of my information, they likely didn't have a lot until Equifax was breached. Fact is, we still don't know yet what was taken, and Equifax isn't letting anyone know.

The US Congress needs to step up and ask what information Equifax has on individuals. Then create laws to limit the information they can acquire and store.

Misleading headline is misleading

And the article body didn't bother to clear it up.

What the IRS actually said is [1] that they've already taken steps on their own and [2]that people should assume their information is already in the hands of criminals and act accordingly.

Number two is actually common sense. People should be monitoring their own data directly or through a monitoring company. The days where people could go for years without bothering to check their credit reporting data are over, and not just because criminals might get/have it.

Status quo is the message

The usual response from any government agency is to quote statistics that shows them in a good light. They love percentages, e.g. improved by 20% or problems down by 20%. It sounds a lot better than using actual numbers, e.g. 50 million citizens were victims of tax fraud last year and this is down from 70 million the year before (these are not real numbers, I am just trying to make a point).

There is approximately 140 million tax payers in the US, and the breach at Equifax compromised 143.5 million. The IRS Commissioner did not use this as an opportunity to say that the status quo can no longer be maintained or tolerated. Instead he stated that citizens should assume that their private identifiers have been compromised and they need to deal with it as best they can. The public would have been better served to hear from the Commissioner that the IRS is championing major changes within Treasury to address the problems that have arisen from the latest and previous Equifax breaches.

It is more than likely that Treasury is waiting on Congress to compel them into action, so there was no opportunity lost here. The result is that the IRS keeps on feeding the hopper. Brilliant.

Bah!

Well, *I* certainly trust the IRS to look after my interests. I mean, if my taxes are fraudulantly filled out it's not like I'm guilty of fraud unless proven innocent ... hang on, I think I see a tiny flaw in the thinking.