Doesn't this require you to trust Equifax to enforce and honor the freeze? I think the solution is "I don't want my report or any of my data in any sort of control or possession of Equifax". Where is that solution?
What is "your data" exactly? And in the limit, how far does this go?
Here's a question: who owns your drivers license? Here's a hint: it isn't you. Can you "own" you mailing address? Copyright and trademark it, make everyone ask permission from you before they write it down? What about your salary? Should your employer have to ask every time they use your salary number in some way, say in aggregate statistics or reporting?
What about information about how you interact with your credit card company? Who owns that, you, or the credit card company? Do the two of you have some kind of joint ownership?
We've made some of these decisions about health data and it has far-reaching consequences, some of them undesirable. It's also been very difficult to enforce. Do you want to extend that kind of regime to every piece of information about a person? Society might grind to a halt, we would be inundated with virtual and physical pop-ups asking "your landlord wants access to your phone number to place a call to you, will you allow it?" And what process would mediate this access control anyway, and how would we trust it?
>virtual and physical pop-ups asking "your landlord wants access to your phone number to place a call to you, will you allow it?"
I would grant the landlord access to contact me while I still have a business relationship with her.
This dire scenario you are trying to paint frankly doesn't sound that bad. I don't need a company to know my entire life's history to exploit my past to deliver a targeted ad.
As far as copyright, small snippets of information or sentence fragments are not copyrightable, but collections of data are.
>Society might grind to a halt, we would be inundated with virtual and physical pop-ups asking "your landlord wants access to your phone number to place a call to you, will you allow it?"
That is how messaging works on many newer systems like Facebook or Instagram, and people appear to find that level of control desirable, not annoying. The only reason the phone system works with public numeric IDs that anyone can dial is that whole thing is a relic from 50 years ago.
If you're curious about the future of privacy, while flawed in some ways, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) comes into effect in the EU next May. Here's their definition of personal data [1]:
"Personal data means data relating to a living individual who is or can be identified either from the data or from the data in conjunction with other information that is in, or is likely to come into, the possession of the data controller. This can be a very wide definition depending on the circumstances."
And then we have this:
"Right to change or remove your details
If you discover that a data controller has details about you that are not factually correct, you can ask them to change or, in some cases, remove these details.
Similarly, if you feel that the organisation or person does not have a valid reason for holding your personal details or that they have taken these details in an unfair way, you can ask them to change or remove these details.
In both cases, you can write to the organisation or person, explaining your concerns or outlining which details are incorrect. Within 40 days, the organisation must do as you ask or explain why they will not do so."
It's true that enforcement is difficult -- I imagine it'll be more reactive than proactive. That said, a breach is handled quite well, assuming the law is enforced:
The issue is that I am responsible for people using this data, but don’t own it like you mentioned. If the banks were responsible for giving out fraudulent loans and there was an easier way to prove that they were fradualent without this PI, then I wouldn’t care. But I have to care right now.
You can essentially opt out. Just never apply for credit in your life. Good luck.
At the end of the day you do consent to this through participating in the banking/credit system.
While the data may not exist without you, you are not the one recording it. Why does it not make sense to assign ownership to the one recording/creating the data in the first place?
I agree that people make themselves vulnerable to someone taking their picture by going outside, but I strongly disagree that people consent to having their picture taken.
Well, maybe it's more accurate to say that it's impossible to consent because no consent is required to take someone's picture in public. People generally exercise control by choosing not to be in public. You could say that having your picture taken is part of the terms of service of using public space. When you agree to something, you also agree to all of the consequences. Just because they are implicit doesn't make them invalid.
Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly like having my picture taken without my explicit consent. In the end, consent is all rather arbitrary because it's not like you can choose not to live in human society on Earth.
