[zbentley]

I'll bite. How did they not harm their users?

[mulmen]

Equifax’s customers are whoever pays them for access to data. Their customers are not the people who had their personal data exposed.

The first rule of Web 2.0 is still true: if you are not paying for the product you are the product.

[zbentley]

It costs me money (past a certain number of freebies) to access Equifax's data on me--to get a credit report.

I get that this is not their main business model, and that their customers that they bundle and sell consumer data to are more valuable. But end users, in this case, are still customers. They still pay money and get a service in return. Contrasted with e.g. Google services, it's a different scenario.