John Oliver Tears Into Equifax Executives for Colossal Data Breach

“In their eyes, we’re not the consumer, we’re the product.”

On Sunday, John Oliver turned his attention to Equifax, one of the three big credit reporting agencies that revealed last month that hackers had breached into the company’s data—compromising millions of people’s personal information including social security numbers, birth dates, and home addresses. 

“The point here is that it’s a huge problem and in any other era this would have been the biggest news story for a month, but now that every day’s headline is simply the words ‘Everything Batshit Bananas Again Today,” it slipped under the radar,” Oliver said. “But it is worth asking how the hell did this happen.”

The Last Week Tonight host then broke down all the ways Equifax executives have screwed up since the massive breach was announced. He also slammed the company for treating its customers as products, not people.

“To think of it in terms of KFC, we’re not the guy buying the 10-piece buckets, we’re the fucking chickens.”

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate