Dear Equifax…

Dear Equifax:

I know how busy you all are, so thank you for taking the time to let us know about the security breach that compromised the personal information of 140+ million of your customers.

I thought, “Wow!  So many customers!  That is a really popular company!  I’m honored to be one of them!”

Thank goodness you waited all that time between discovering the hacking on July 29 and when you shared with us on September 7.  That allowed time for…

• Equifax Chief Financial Officer John Gamble to sell shares worth nearly $950,000 on August 1…
• Joseph Loughran, Equifax’s president for U.S. information solutions, to sell shares worth about $685,000 on August 1…
• And Rodolfo Ploder, president of workforce solutions, to sell stock for just more than $250,000 on August 2…

Before your stock tanked.

Well, I don’t mean “tanked,” exactly, your shares are only down 27%, and anyway, who really understands the stock market?

And besides, telling us back in July would have just given me all that extra time to worry about it, and as everyone knows, worry leads to stress and that’s bad for my health.

As long as I’m writing, I wanted to compliment you on your business model.  According to award-winning financial columnist Liz Weston, we have no right to stop Equifax and the other two credit bureaus from collecting information about us.  We also can’t prevent you from selling that information or keeping it in inadequately secured databases.

You NAILED it!

Speaking of getting nailed, not long after your announcement, my Visa credit card was hacked, and then nine days later, my husband’s Visa card was hacked.  This has provided us with yet another shared interest, and married couples can’t have too many of those.

I do hope Richard F. Smith, your chairman and CEO, gets a chance to read this because I have to compliment him on the statement he issued on September 12.  He called the cybersecurity breach “the most humbling moment in our 118-year history” which was

sweet, but equally important, not once did Rich promise, “This will never happen again.”  Good strategy!

And who can blame Rich for just announcing his retirement, when he has $18.4 million in retirement benefits and could get millions of dollars more, including lifetime health coverage, according to a regulatory filing?

Retire, big bucks – good strategy!

Lifetime health coverage – good strategy!

Oh – gotta run, I just got a text…wow, my new Visa credit card was just hacked…