
A New Challenger to Equifax’s Employee Verification Service - victorkab
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/your-money/equifax-challenger-truework.html
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expathacker
At my last full-time job, I helped our infra team staged a revolt and some of
us threatened to quit when HR announced they had signed up for Equifax's
employee verification service about 2 months after Equifax's most recent
breach. I'm happy to say that within 3 days HR had stopped using this service.

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AndyMcConachie
Why does it matter if it's Equifax or some other company? Employers are still
handing over the data.

I take issue with much of the language used when discussing the Equifax
breach. It wasn't a breach that Equifax _lost_ my data. It was a breach that
Equifax _had_ my data.

Regardless, I don't see replacing one scumbag company for a different scumbag
company as really fixing anything. Also this article is nothing more than a PR
piece for Truework. Shame on the NYT for publishing such drivel and calling it
journalism.

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TeMPOraL
> _Why does it matter if it 's Equifax or some other company? Employers are
> still handing over the data._

Because in a just world, Equifax would be disbanded after that fiasco. They
shouldn't be running around, offering more data-vacuuming services. GP and
their colleagues did their part to send a market signal that they're not OK
with the current state of affairs.

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mc32
Why can't companies use the SSS or IRS, etc., for this kind of verification?
Why have to go through a third party to get information back from the
government? Where required, they already need to do an eVerify anyhows, don't
they?

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segmondy
IRS doesn't have APIs. I've done some work with them, you have to manually
upload CSV and download the results hours later. Automating it is against
their TOS. For one of the data I get from them, I've the option of getting in
printer on paper, DVD or magnetic tape.

~~~
craftyguy
> Automating it is against their TOS.

Why would anyone want something outlawing automation in their TOS? Is their
'service' maximizing human effort and minimizing throughput?

~~~
394549
> Why would anyone want something outlawing automation in their TOS? Is their
> 'service' maximizing human effort and minimizing throughput?

It could be that they want to make usage painful to keep control of the data.
Automated scraping/bulk downloads would be much easier to detect than TOS
violations that occur after the data is downloaded.

For instance, I wish my county recorder's office forced people to manually
retrieve property public records rather than providing them electronically.
The extra cost would make it unfeasible for data brokers and people search
websites to slurp up all the data for resale, while still allowing access for
legitimate purposes.

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chatmasta
How much does it cost to get an advertisement like this in the NYT?

