In the New York Times article of “Why the Equifax Breach Stings So Bad” the author Ron Lieber expresses his frustration of the shackles that come with being a victim of the Equifax data breach. This article not only summarized Lieber’s frustration with Equifax and credit bureaus but also had quotes from consumers who were affected by this breach. From what I learned is that Equifax suffered from a data breach in which a large amount of consumers data was stolen. However, a large amount of frustration has come from consumers who do not even use Equifax. Lieber notes that the credit reporting agency Equifax has stored data from banks, credit card issuers, auto finance companies, etc. Then Equifax and their partners are able to create an algorithm to determine how much a consumer must pay for anything expensive they may need to finance. Lieber expresses the frustration in this article as to how the credit reporting industry is seen as an entrapment because to do business with any financial service you need to agree to their terms which includes sharing sensitive information which in turn can be stolen (as proven with the Equifax Data Breach). When the data was reported stolen Equifax was charging consumer’s to freeze their data in order to prevent new credit lines being opened from the data breach. However, this posed some moral ethical questioning because how is it fair to be charging someone for your mistake of not doing enough to protect someone’s personal data. The Equifax breach article has shined light on ethical morals on the basis of how the consumer’s were treated after this breach and if Equifax should have access to all this data if it is not directly from their customers. In this case analysis I will argue that utilitarianism shows that the Equifax breach harmed millions of consumers some of which were not associated with Equifax at all. This group of consumers was harmed by Equifax carelessly sharing information to its partners without consent which is morally bad. 

There are a lot of things we need to consider when it comes to large corporations. More than often they are not going to look at their organization through an ethical or moral eye. As stated in our first reading Milton Friedman says exactly what a corporation’s duty is in the title “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”. Friedman defends his point in his writing that the duty of a corporation is to maximize profits while within legal boundaries. If the corporation is profiting this will in turn be better for society because this will create jobs and economic growth. While having this perspective can be beneficial to large corporations it is flawed and morally wrong to not care about its consumers as the company is doing the bare minimum to protect sensitive data. The Equifax data breach highlights exactly why this perspective is wrong. 

Equifax is a corporation that collects an astronomical amount of information from several credit reporting agencies. The data that is collected from others and stored in their database includes the most sensitive information including but not limited to social security numbers, date of birth, addresses, etc. All this information is being collected with or without consent of consumers. As mentioned before the corporation collects its data from banks and other financial institutions. With consumers not consenting to Equifax to collecting their data it doesn’t necessarily mean that Equifax having access to the data made it illegal. Equifax is a corporation that was profit driven. They thought it was their duty to meet the profit margins rather than have a proactive approach to consumer protection. The relaxed security measure that was set in place gave an opportunity to hackers to steal millions of people’s sensitive data. At this time there were no real safe guards set in place to protect a consumer’s data. Again, while it is not illegal to not set safeguards to protect a consumer it does set a precedent that this profit marketing approach is not ethically responsible.  

After the data breach consumer’s did not find that Equifax was handling the data breach appropriately. Consumers who were initially concerned about the breach and wanted to get ahead and attempt to prevent fraud wanted to freeze their credit. While Equifax did offer this service to the consumers they were initially charging the consumers for this service. When reading this I was infuriated because why should a consumer have to pay for a service that they did not need until their data was stolen, especially by a corporation that is profiting from their data. When Equifax was still charging the consumers for this service it just showed that Equifax still cared that profit was more important than the consumer. 

While Friedman’s flawed approach may have been profit over people Melvin Anshen argued that organization’s duty is not solely to maximize profits but rather viewing this from a societal point. Meaning that organizations duties and responsibilities stretch beyond just profit marketing. Anshen expresses that organizations should have a meaningful relationship with their consumers. Basically stating that when the organization thrives society will reap the benefits from this positive relationship. This approach is quite the opposite to what Friedman’s argument was. However, both of these perspectives in my opinion rely on a utilitarianism approach as if the approach they take they are doing for the greater good. 

Viewing this perspective and reflecting on the Equifax data breach you can see that Equifax did not have any sort of social obligations to their consumers. Failing to protect the consumer’s data they were then met with a clear breach of trust between the organization and it’s consumers and even in the article it was expressed by multiple victims that this shows the societal downfall of the social contract they should have had with their consumers. If Equifax chose to follow Anshen’s approach this data breach may have never occurred. They would have viewed data protection as a moral obligation instead of cutting corners to maximize profits. When a corporation has access to the amount of sensitive data such as what Equifax had, corporations should be better equipped to handle this type of sensitive data. They should be approaching the protection of data through a moral obligation of protection and transparency.