The Equifax breach was a leak of personally identifiable information on the Equifax servers that affected one hundred and forty-seven million Americans. The moment this data leak happened, many people wanted to immediately freeze their credit scores because of the mass hysteria brought about by the idea of having criminals with access to enough information about you to be able to take out loans in your name and ruin your credit score, something that dictates how much more money you will have to spend on things based on how well you can pay a loan back. These people that wanted to protect themselves after Equifax couldn’t protect even themselves were forced to pay a fee on this, where the money went to Equifax. Equifax also didn’t provide help to the people affected until much later when the government forced their hand and money to go out to those that were harmed financially by this. In this case analysis, I will argue that Virtue Ethics shows us that this breach of personal information harmed the common consumer by destroying their sense of safety under business and highlighting their vulnerability because of Equifax’s incredibly unvirtuous decisions, which were morally wrong.

            To begin, I will first discuss Friedman’s concept of corporate social responsibility. In his paper, Friedman argues, despite many fallacies, that the main social responsibility of a business is to maximize profits so that a community would flourish. He explains that since a business would maximize profits, more people would buy into a business to support it more, making the business more seated and secure, and allowing more money to flow to its employees to be spent by the community. He argued that this would in turn allow the people to build up the community in any way they desire, quite naively believing that the people would not spend their newfound money on themselves to improve their own quality of life rather than improving the community. However, it is obvious even without examples that a business trying to make profits anywhere they can, will be disastrous, or at the very least makes the community suffer.

            If a business tries to maximize profits, the easiest avenue to accomplish this task is through the undercutting of the people that built your business. This can be done through either raising the price for the sole reason of maximizing profits on singular items, or providing fees for services, especially on services that the people never asked to be a part of, like Equifax. The credit system governs the financial lives of the people, which makes it too much to ignore, and the best way to make profits is to put fees on every action taken to view, freeze, or fix credit scores. From the first few days to the first week of the Equifax data leak scare, there was the normal fee despite the millions of fearful Americans that just wanted to protect their financial life. Equifax only stood to benefit from the suffering of the people that were forced to take part in their system, which follows the idea of maximizing profits, but it is obvious that it is not a benefit to the community or the people that reside in it but the business itself.

            With Virtue Ethics, we can determine the honorable or moral implications of Equifax’s decisions. Equifax was aware that this would have negative implications on their reputation and overall stocks and profits for the near future, so it does not seem too out of the box to think they would be hesitant to get rid of another income source, that being the fee to freeze your credit, especially from how much money they could make form the influx of common American consumers only scared out of their mind for their family and their financial health. However, this was quite possibly the least virtuous thing that a business entity, or any reasonably moral person, would do. This made the common American feel how vulnerable they are to business. This is the moral equivalent of a business selling the cure to a disease they caused, just despicable. The virtuous thing to do would have been to lend a helping hand as soon as possible, understanding the dire situation your accident has caused, despite the terrible reputation that has been gained from this. Foregoing the increasingly expensive costs to your company to continue to lend more services to the people you hurt, whether you meant to or not. These virtuous actions would also improve the community if they became a staple of what businesses should do, as businesses have the authority to make these changes to society.

            Anshen in his paper discusses a concept that relates to the power that Equifax holds to make a change. Anshen discusses the concept of business playing a massive role in society to be a cornerstone of development and wealth, and it can switch from being either development-oriented at the expense of society’s quality of life, or it can be a quality-of-life oriented business at the expense of slower development of wealth in a society. He discusses how the social responsibility to improve society should be placed in the hands of businesses because they have the direct power and ability to do so. When looking at the choices made by Equifax, it really does show that Equifax did in fact have the power to influence society through its decisions.

            Equifax throughout the data leak event made a few choices that really did impact how society reacted and felt towards business, even before the data breach. Equifax’s influence having such a strong grasp on the American people with no opt-out was a symbol of the power that businesses can have over society, an example of how influential they can be to guide society. This is proven by the mass scare after their inability to keep safe the personal information of 147 million Americans. After the data leak, the amount of fearful and vulnerable Americans that spoke their minds publicly or privately about the terrible fees that they had to pay just to keep their information safe numbered past the thousands, and quite possibly go into the millions. The American people despite their complaints still had to pay their fees until Equifax decided that they would lift the fees not but a few days after the incident, after possibly the largest influx of people was already over, and with that the largest payment of those fees to Equifax. Their influence from their decisions not only comes from those decisions they made, but also the decisions they neglected to make, that being the decision to help those they have wronged.

            Equifax’s inability to make the decision to help the people is incredibly unvirtuous. It took the federal government to force their hand to finally give money back to the people, along with their own services to help the people they failed to protect, and to also help the people they scammed out of their money for their mistake. To be truly virtuous to rebuild the trust of the people and make them feel safer with business, they should have acted as early as possible to remedy people’s phycological harm and possibly financial harm as well. It should not have taken more than a year to even consider helping those in need. Equifax should have at least been proactive enough to notify those affected and preemptively frozen their account at any sign of loans being taken out after the event, but to really be virtuous they should have offered their free identity help services at their own expense to show that they care about the quality of life of society, as they truly do have the power to lessen the phycological effects that this disaster has put on the people and improve the respect of the people that provide you with the means of profits.

            Equifax’s unvirtuous decisions have harmed the common citizen by forcing fees on those who were affected by Equifax’s own failure to protect the forcibly taken identity of the American people and by making no sign of wanting to help the people that were affected until they were forced by the government to do so. Now I understand that it isn’t the common choice or habit for a good businessman to always throw everything you have left in a crisis at the people who were left devastated by the company’s own mistake but being a good businessman for the sake of preserving your company does not mean that the choices they make are virtuous or an improvement on the quality of life of the people that buy their products. To be virtuous means to take these risks to just be a good person for the betterment of society, not to do good deeds if your company budget allows for it. Being virtuous especially doesn’t mean penalizing scared and helpless citizens.