1. You haven’t been shot by someone who won’t get punished (yet)

It hurts to be this cynical, but most government websites are under the control of appointees who have total disdain for the agency they’re in charge of, at best, or have a tenuous grasp of what we call “facts” at worst.

And yet, it is certain that as a high-priority target, Equifax has been under constant attack for several years. As have Experian and Transunion. This is just the first attack that succeeded on a large scale (that we know about).

It’s not even the “wrong hands” - your info is out in the wild, forever. That’s a genie you can’t put back in the bottle.

Experian should be required to provide zero-cost ID theft monitoring, protection, and recovery services for the lifetime of affected parties.

They paid the money too. Your money isn’t somehow more valuable than theirs.