[Osem]

Yes it's all very worrying for a lot of people. I have no idea what sort of information they might hold about people who aren't subscribers to their services in some way or other but I gather other major companies like BT, British Gas etc. use them with regard to their own customers so presumably Equifax has information on a whole lot of people who're totally unaware of it.

This is one of the reasons I try to keep my online activities to a minimum but slowly and surely we're all being pushed into doing more and more stuff online which is all fine until something goes wrong, sensitive data goes astray, the guilty companies are slapped on the wrist and we're issued with yet another series of 'lessons have been learned' assurances which hold about as much water as a sieve.

When are the authorities going to get tough about this and prevent such vast amounts of data being held by the same people? The bigger these companies get, the more we're in a situation with an ever increasing number of eggs all on the same basket. By the time the regulatory bodies do what they do, it's too late, they can impose fines but the data has been stolen and millions of people's lives are affected.