Thank you, may I have another?

In what may be one of the boldest corporate ironies to come down the pike since Ben & Jerry sold out to Unilever PLC, Equifax — the credit-reporting company that helped invent the data-mining business — last week announced a new enterprise. For a mere $40 a year, Equifax will help subscribers evade the depredations of — gasp — data miners.
Offering to “help consumers guard against the risk of identity theft,” Equifax’s new Credit Watch program will provide e-mail updates to customers within 24 hours of any significant changes, such as new account inquiries or late-payment notices, added to their credit reports.
Under pressure from consumers, Congress and the Federal Trade Commission, the “big three” credit reporting companies — Equifax, Experian and Trans Union — have tightened security measures and access to consumer data, and have eased the process for changing erroneous information on credit reports. Even so, the FTC logs thousands of complaints each year from disgruntled citizens who’ve been denied credit or had their identities stolen through credit reports, and earlier this year fined the three companies a combined $2.5 million for failing to adequately respond to consumer complaints.
“We really are trying to do something proactive about identity theft,” says Equifax’s Jeffrey Peebles.
But Jennifer Geigerich of Georgia Public Interest Research Group, which monitors credit and privacy issues, is far less reticent.
“It’s just another rip-off,” she says firmly. Services such as those being marketed by Equifax, she says, should be provided free to consumers to begin with. “If it weren’t for them selling our information to everybody they can, we wouldn’t need them to ‘protect’ us from identity thieves.”