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Washington, DC– Congressman Brett Guthrie (KY-02) grilled the former CEO of Equifax Richard Smith about the massive data breach of customers’ personal data during a Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing yesterday. 

“Credit reporting services are why you can sit down at a car dealership and walk away with a car that afternoon because somebody can check right away that you’re credit-worthy,” noted Guthrie. “But people aren’t confident in these services right now with their information flowing out there.”

The subcommittee held the hearing to get answers for consumers regarding how Equifax could allow the personal information of 143 million Americans to be stolen. This nearly unprecedented hack affected nearly 50 percent of the total U.S. population.

Guthrie began his questions by asking Smith why it took so long for the Equifax board and consumers to be notified about the breach.

“July 31^st was the suspicious activity and notifying the board was three weeks later, August 24-25^th. Looking back now knowing how colossal this is, what would you have done differently that Equifax didn’t do?” asked Guthrie.

Guthrie also interrogated Smith on the botched response from Equifax after the breach became public. When Equifax set up a new website for consumers to check whether their information had been exposed, they sent out the wrong link to the website multiple times.

“1.9 million Kentuckians were exposed in this hack,” said Guthrie. “One of the questions we have is about the process Equifax underwent to help people determine whether they were hacked and one was setting up a new website. There were issues with that website… and many consumers were not able to determine with certainty if their information was breached.”

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