Equifax agrees to $700 million settlement over massive data breach


Equifax has agreed to pay up to $700 million to settle state and federal investigations into a 2017 data breach, The Washington Post reports. The breach exposed the Social Security numbers, credit-card information, and other private data of more than 147 million people. The case left more than half of U.S. adults vulnerable to identity theft. The penalties include payments to consumers, regulatory fines, and changes to the credit-reporting agency's practices.
"This is the largest data breach settlement in U.S. history," said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. "These data breaches occur because of corporate greed. Corporate leaders decided to put an extra dollar of profit into their pocket, as opposed to that dollar going into the infrastructure of the company to protect their data." Equifax did not immediately comment.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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