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I find it funny that companies like AT&T and Equifax are barely scrutinized for their data handling practices compared to the Amazon and Googles of the world. I wonder why that is.

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Yes! Equifax has very lax security. Last year they leaked my social insurance number to a fraudster. When they were describing this on the phone they didn't seem to think they did anything wrong. What makes it worse is I never even gave it to them - they just get it straight from the government I guess?

They get it all kinds of ways. There's a podcast on their big breach that talks about some of them - https://spokemedia.io/breach/

My first instinct was lobbying spend, but Amazon and Google show up in the top 20 and Equifax isn't on the list (although, I have my suspicions that the numbers here aren't necessarily the whole picture. Financial chicanery is a whole industry, after all). [1]

I can imagine, though, that hiding information is a lot easier when you're less often in the public eye. Amazon and Google, through their ubiquity, have a higher hill to climb when it comes to avoiding scrutiny.

1 - https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders

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