HOBOKEN, N.J.–The data breach at Equifax that involves personal data on as many as 143 million Americans isn’t the only issue facing the company—or all credit bureaus, for that matter.
But in the breach’s wake, more than half of those surveyed said they believe Equifax should lose its ability to act as a credit bureau in the United States.
Meanwhile, according to a survey of 1,000 Americans over age 18, as well as a review of the CFPB’s consumer complaint database for credit reporting complaints, a number of trend lines can be seen.
The survey by LendEDU, which can be found here, found that through mid-September the CFPB had received 51.696 complaints related to credit bureaus, the largest category of all the complaints it received.
“When the remaining days of 2017 are accounted for, the three major credit bureaus are on pace to receive 59,096 CFPB complaints this year,” LendEDU said.
This number represents a major uptick from the 41,792 complaints filed in 2016, or a 41% increase. Complaints to the CFPB related to Equifax were up 32% as of mid-September.
“Not surprisingly, a healthy majority of Americans, 84.20%, have indeed heard of the Equifax cyber breach,” LendEDU reported. “The remaining 15.80% had not yet heard of the Equifax breach, which is actually quite impressive in today's age of 24/7 media.
Seeking to not “taint” the results of the remaining questions, some questions were broken down into two respondent pools: (1) Those who had heard of the Equifax breach, (2) Those who had not heard of the Equifax breach.
The company said that of those who had heard of the breach, 842 people, 54% said they believed Equifax should no longer be permitted to offer credit reporting services in the U.S.
Among the other findings:
* 55.11% of Americans have not checked to see if their information was hacked
* 26.48% of Americans plan on joining a class action lawsuit against Equifax, 46.32% are unsure
* 83.01% of Americans either “Strongly Agree” or “Somewhat Agree” that lawmakers should enact stricter legislation and oversight to protect consumer credit information