Regulators, politicians criticize Equifax

NEW YORK (AP) — Washington regulators and politicians swiftly criticized Equifax over the exposure of 143 million Americans’ personal information.

Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he will call for Congressional hearings on the Equifax breach.

Equifax’s requirement for affected customers to sign up for arbitration also drew a backlash. Democrats in the House and Senate called on the company to pull back on its requirement that anyone who signs up for credit monitoring give up their right to sue Equifax in a class-action lawsuit.

“It’s shameful that Equifax would take advantage of victims by forcing people to sign over their rights in order to get credit-monitoring services they wouldn’t even need if Equifax hadn’t put them at risk in the first place," said U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

"If Equifax is genuine about wanting to protect customers, it must remove forced arbitration immediately from TrustedID and any other services offered to victims of the data breach,” Brown said in a statement.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the nation’s chief watchdog for financial services, called the breach “troubling” and said Equifax should drop the arbitration requirement. The CFPB recently passed a rule requiring financial companies to let customers sue together when a large group has been wronged.