Equifax/Social Security Tie-Up Raises Concerns
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This is Your Money Matters from The Wall Street Journal. Welcome to Your Money Matters. I'm J.R. Whalen in New York. The recent data breach of Equifax Networks has raised new concern over the company's work with the U.S. Social Security Administration and the company's supply of identity verification services to the agency. Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Rapoport joins us in our studio with details. So, Michael, can you explain specifically the nature of the work that Equifax does for Social Security and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services?
What government identity-verification work does Equifax perform for Social Security and CMS?
Well,
Equifax supplies identity verification services to the Social Security Administration for what's called the My Social Security Portal. That's a portal that consumers use to do things like check their Social Security benefits and request replacement Social Security ID cards. For the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, what they do is supply employment and income data that the CMS uses to check consumers' eligibility for subsidies to purchase health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. And this is a lucrative project for Equifax, is that right? Well, together, those two contracts supply Equifax with roughly $20 million in revenue a year. Equifax has more than $3 billion in revenue a year, so it's not a huge amount.
It is a continuing source of income for the company. And they've been doing this with the government agencies for a while? For the last few years, for Social Security for the last year or two, for CMS since about 2013.
Now, you point out in your story in the Wall Street Journal, there's no evidence that Social Security Administration or the CMS systems were compromised due to the Equifax breach. Is that right?
That's right.
As the investigation was going on into the most recent Equifax breach, you talk about in your story the fact that they were developing additional verification services to sell to companies.
Is that a fair way to say it? What they've been doing ever since, continuing doing ever since they discovered the breach in late July is They've continued on kind of a business-as-usual track, investigating the data breach, not telling consumers anything about it until early September. But in that time, for instance, they announced a new deal with a company called Fidelity National, to provide a new verification service that would allow consumers to access a variety of accounts through one single identifier that would be accessed through a fingerprint. So they've continued along their same track. Over the last several years, they've been very active in introducing new products and expanding their business outside of their traditional credit reporting services.
All right. We're speaking with The Wall Street Journal's Michael Rapoport about Equifax's work with the U.S. government providing identity verification information. And you're listening to Your Money Matters from The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening, everyone. So, Michael, Social Security Administration says they never share Social Security numbers with Equifax, but Social Security numbers may have been among the data at risk during the Equifax hack?
Well, Social Security numbers were at risk, but through Equifax. The information compromised that was stolen from Equifax included stuff like names, addresses, driver's license numbers, social security numbers, but that all happened through Equifax. Anyone accessing the Social Security Administration's portal, that information, to the best of our knowledge, was not compromised. Okay. And the investigations go on into the hack that was divulged just last week. The FBI is investigating the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which regulate Equifax, are also investigating the Various state regulators have weighed in as well. There are a number of investigations that are going to go on a while.
All right.
That's The Wall Street Journal's Michael Rapoport joining us here in the studio. Michael, thanks for being with us. Thank you. And thank you for listening to Your Money Matters.
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