During the five weeks after hackers stole 143 million Americans’ data from Equifax, and while its execs were selling off their stock by the millions, the company sprang into action, producing an insecure site for checking whether your own data was breached that produces the same output no matter what name and SSN you input.
But though the website has a broken cryptographic certificate and is running an unpatched stock version of WordPress, it’s not wholly useless: the site does subject you to a “license agreement” that makes you give up your right to sue Equifax (the company claims that this clause was not intended to limit your ability to sue it over the mass breach).
Like many forced arbitration clauses, the Equifax EULA makes a nod towards equitable treatment: after clicking it, you have 30 days to inform the company, in writing, that you do not agree to arbitration.
Paul Butler, “a quant in New York City,” has put up a website called “Unarbitrate” that has a form you can fill in to produce a printable letter to this effect. He’s even offering to print and mail your letter for you. He promises not to retain or share your data.
Equifax dumped dox on 143 million Americans (as well as lucky Britons and Canadians!), sat on the news for five weeks, let its execs sell millions in stock, and then unveiled an unpatched, insecure WordPress site with an abusive license agreement where you could sign up for “free” credit monitoring for a year, in case someone used the immortal, immutable Social Security Number that Equifax lost control over to defraud you.
Your SSN is vulnerable forever, but Equifax’s “protection” only lasts a year – surely there’s an oversight there?
Not at all! To get your “free” monitoring from Equifax, you have to provide a credit card, and if you somehow forget to cancel your “free” service a year from now, Equifax will simply start billing you…forever.
Club Jäger was a popular Minneapolis night spot until Citypages revealed that its owner, Julius Jaeger De Roma, donated $500 to the senatorial campaign of David Duke, a former KKK Grand Wizard and ardent Donald Trump supporter.
First, local entertainers and trivia night organizers cancelled their upcoming commitments to the club, then the regulars stopped coming, and then, when Nazis started coming to the club to show their support for white supremacy, the staff quit.
I was at work today for Labour Day and on TV was Good Morning America. The theme was celebrating the American worker and their accomplishments. I’ll tell you how it went down.
Kelly put on her glasses, smile wide, and pulled out a piece of paper which she read from. The paper was from an article
(which I have issues with, but I will leave alone for now) by ABC news. Kelly proceeded only to read the opening of it, which reads: ‘Americans work more than anyone in the industrialized world. More than the English, more than the French, way more than the Germans or Norwegians. Even, recently, more than the Japanese. And Americans take less vacation, work longer days, and retire later, too.’
And everyone cheered.
And they kept cheering when Kelly put her paper down and smiled at everyone. (not continuing with the rest of the article which suggests that this may in fact be a problem).
And I just couldn’t BELIEVE that anyone was cheering. America. AMERICA you work more than the French, who are entitled by law to have 5 weeks off a year for vacation and can not work more than 35 hours per week. You work more than Norway, who average 33 hours per week and 44,000 dollars a year. Germany, where AGAIN, we see a shorter work week and better pay! And all of these countries have health care and better pay and free/affordable education!
WHY ARE YOU CHEERING?
I have a different interpretation of this information: the American worker is the most taken advantage of worker in the industrialized world. It’s plain and simple. You work long hours and get horrible pay. You take multiple jobs and work and work and work just to get by. Unions are disappearing, jobs are always looking for part timers and all you are doing is giving up your time for less money, less vacation, less safety and stability and less education than anyone else on the list.
Celebrate Labour day. Celebrate the accomplishments of the common worker, but don’t let these people trick you into thinking you should celebrate the theft of your time and energy, or the fruits of your labour.
