Do you remember the massive 2017 data breach at the major credit monitoring service Equifax? It’s the one where the company’s failures
exposed almost half of all Americans to the risk of costly and traumatic identity fraud. It’s the hack where Equifax waited weeks before alerting people to the failure of its security systems.
Now the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — which oversee vast collections of your sensitive, personal data — is paying Equifax more than $7 million in US tax dollars to provide identity authentication for taxpayers across the country. If you think the government hiring a identity verification company that showed 143 million American its absolute inability to keep private information out of the hands of hackers is ridiculous, you’re not alone.
Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Ben Sasse (R-NE) are calling on the IRS to revoke the Equifax’s no-bid contract unless the agency can provide a full and satisfactory explanation for its decision to contract with the troubled company.
Last year, Equifax spent
nearly $2 million lobbying government officials], so we’ll need deafening public opposition to this contract if concerned taxpayers — and common sense — are going to prevail.
Please take a stand for personal privacy and better government! Sign the petition to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and tell him to revoke his agency’s contract with Equifax. 