The Equifax hearings regarding the security breach are now into their second day. Richard Smith, the former CEO who ran like a scalded cat in hopes to save his own keister, has been on the hot seat. What has come from his testimony will enrage you. Prior to Tuesday’s hearing, this revelation popped up.

The company announced Monday that the total number of people impacted by its breach is not 143 million—the amount it first disclosed—but in fact 145.5 million.

Oh well, that’s just ducky. 145.5 million affected??!! You know what that tells me? The ACTUAL number of people impacted is a lot bigger than that. Keep in mind, Yahoo sheepishly announced yesterday that their breach didn’t affect only 1 billion users. Nope.

Any bets that within a year or so we’ll see the same damned announcement from Equifax?? Back to the Equifax hearing on Tuesday. A lot of excuses and a lot of keister covering. 

Here, courtesy of Wired, are 6 takeaways from yesterday’s testimony.

1. The timeline of who knew what when and the lack of urgency to fix this is appalling.
2. The patching process was completely inadequate and Smith throws some unnamed employee under the bus.
3. Equifax stored sensitive consumer info in plaintext and didn’t even TRY to encrypt it!
4. Equifax security reviews were quarterly rather than monthly. Well, that explains a great deal!
5. Richard Smith and Equifax have NO idea of nation-state actors were involved in the data breach.
6. The breach notification site was put up on WordPress because their main website wasn’t capable of handling the issues!
7. Evidently 400 million consumer visits to the breach notification site would’ve crippled the main system. What, like the ENTIRE Equifax system wasn’t ALREADY crippled because of the company’s incompetence??!!

In addition to Equifax’s websites inability to handle the overload of visits, Hurricane Irma was blamed for call center problems! Another bit of information that should make us all feel “safe and secure” is this:

IRS awards Equifax no-bid contract to verify taxpayer identities and help prevent fraud after huge security breach. https://t.co/ttxsfnR4xr

— Paul Volpe (@pvolpe) October 3, 2017

Yes, you read that correctly. Equifax, on Friday got rewarded for their incompetence with a $7.25 million contract from the IRS to help combat FRAUD.

The IRS is hiring the embattled credit reporting agency to “verify taxpayer identity and to assist in ongoing identity verification and validations needs of the Service,” according to its filing on Federal Business Opportunities, a website that lists federal contracts.

The IRS labels Equifax as a “sole source order,” which means that the agency believes the credit reporting company is the only business capable of providing the service.

Someone at the IRS has evidently been living under a rock since early July. Or they don’t care about how bad the optics are on this. Or both.

Hey, I already may have had my credit record stolen, why not throw in my taxes too?

— Helms hard a lee…wait is that a barge!?! (@ReddishRabbit) October 3, 2017

Meanwhile, guess what??!!

Smith artfully dodged questions of why the company waited so long to notify the public, and about the perception that Equifax sought to profit off of its own data breach. One lawmaker noted that Smith gave two public speeches in the second and third weeks of August in which he was quoted as saying that fraud was a “a huge opportunity for Equifax,” and that it was a “massive, growing business” for the company. [Emphasis Added]

Well, that business model he speaks of certainly explains the stupidity of the IRS handing Equifax a lucrative contract to mis-handle fraud protection now doesn’t it? It’s enough to make you cry.

However, there is some laughter amongst the tears of rage.

Nope, that’s not photoshop!

Man at Equifax breach hearing dressed as the guy from Monopoly. pic.twitter.com/KX4GHePpYz

— Greg Hogben (@MyDaughtersArmy) October 4, 2017

That is Amanda Werner from Americans for Financial Reform and Public Citizen, dressed as Rich Uncle Pennybags from the Monopoly game.

“I am dressed as the Monopoly Man to call attention to Equifax and Wells Fargo’s use of forced arbitration as a get-out-of-jail-free card for massive misconduct,” Werner said in a Twitter message to CNN Tech. “They use these ripoff clauses buried in the fine print to ensure that consumers can’t join together to hold them accountable in court.”

Troll Level Expert!

Will there be any real consequences for Equifax’s incompetence?

It get's better… He was just holding up a "Community Chest" Get of Jail card from the game… pic.twitter.com/N5SRrDB6j7

— Chris Novak (@ChrisJNovak) October 4, 2017

I doubt it. Instead, Equifax will throw some poor sap of an employee under the bus and Congress will give Equifax a real “Get out of jail” card while leaving all of us twisting in the wind.