The summary is:
The text is a transcript of a segment from the show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where he talks about the massive data breach at Equifax, one of the big three credit reporting agencies. He criticizes Equifax for its negligence, incompetence and lack of accountability, and exposes how they failed to prevent, disclose and respond to the hack that compromised the personal information of 145 million Americans. He also warns consumers about the risks of identity theft and the limitations of credit monitoring services like LifeLock, which ironically buys data from Equifax. He urges people to freeze their credit reports with all three agencies and provides links to do so on his twitter feed. He makes jokes throughout the segment, using references to Daniel Radcliffe, Lindsay Lohan, Justin Bieber and Fraggle Rock. He ends by repeating the social security number of LifeLock's former CEO Todd Davis, who had his identity stolen 13 times after publicly revealing it in an ad campaign.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. Equifax is one of the big three credit reporting agencies that keep financial data on millions of Americans.
2. Equifax discovered a data breach on July 29th, 2017, that exposed the private information of 145 million Americans, including their names, social security numbers, birth dates, and addresses.
3. Equifax did not inform the public about the breach until September, and in the meantime, three of its executives sold nearly two million dollars in company stock.
4. Equifax created a website for consumers to check if they were affected by the breach, but it was easily impersonated by a fake site that they accidentally tweeted links to several times.
5. Equifax offered consumers a year of free credit monitoring, but initially required them to waive their right to sue the company or join a class action lawsuit.
6. LifeLock, a third-party credit monitoring service that saw a surge in business after the breach, purchases some of its services from Equifax and has had its own issues with fraud and false advertising.
7. Consumer advocates recommend freezing your credit reports with all three credit reporting companies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) to prevent identity theft and fraud.
8. Equifax was awarded a seven-million-dollar contract by the IRS to prevent fraud on the same day that Congress was questioning its former CEO about the breach.
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