Greetings fellow digits. Wonder who's taking a loan out on your identity today?
There's about a 50/50 chance someone with that in mind has your name, social security number, address, date of birth, number of teeth, and shoe size. It's okay, though, because if you promise not to sue the place they stole it, Equifax, you can get six weeks of free credit monitoring.
Equifax is a credit bureau as well as a data gathering service. They sell information about you to whoever wants to buy it. Or they just give it to whoever can hack through the paper thin security in their databases.
I'm pretty sure none of you volunteered your personal information to Equifax or hired them to "store" your secrets. But that doesn't matter.
There are many companies who sell information about you besides Equifax. Too many to list. You happily, and blindly, give your private information to most of them. Even your internet provider is selling your habits.
About the only person who can't make money on your personal information is you. And your medical provider, but their computers have probably been hacked, too.
It's all in the name of free enterprise.
Last week, my nephew called my mother, his grandmother. He said don't tell anybody, but I'm in jail and if they don't get $3000 now, I can't get out. Call this number and they'll tell you what to do.
So my mother called the number and the guy demanded $6000 in large bills via Fedex to an apartment in Massachusetts. If she does that before 5pm, her sweet grandson will be out by dark.
The good news is she called to ask me to take the money to Fedex. The other good news is it wasn't my nephew calling. It took a while to convince mom of that, though.
The amazing thing is, I've heard versions of the same scenario from several people I shared the story with. This is an ongoing scam.
We have become a country eaten up with scams. It did not just start when the Scammer in Chief entered the office in January, either. Trump is the result of a long running scam that gained traction 37 or so years ago.
It's the scam that makes most of today's scams possible: government is the enemy.
If that were true the folks who fought England for independence would have left it at that. Except for some reason they wanted didn't.
They created a government based on the Articles of Confederation. It didn't work very well, so they went back to the drawing board and wrote and ratified our Constitution.
But the actor fooled us into believing governance isn't something a real American needs. Then he set in motion a series of actions that would take governance out of our hands and put it in corporations and special interests.
Regulations that make it harder for you to open a business make it easier for Walmart to. Regulations that protect you get in the way of big business.
Which is why a company you never heard of can make billions of dollars every year selling you.