G2 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022
the activation code in the email
you received from the
settlement administrator. You
can also call Experian at 1-877-
251-5822. You must use the
activation code by June 27.
l If any call or
correspondence via text or email
says you have to pay anything,
it’s 100 percent a scam. This
service is free for you. You do
not need to provide any
payment information to enroll,
and you do not need to cancel
the service when it ends.
l You will not get a call about
the settlement, the FTC points
out. However, you can reach the
Equifax settlement
administrator at 1-833-759-2982.
l If you want to know more
about the breach, go to
equifaxbreachsettlement.com.
Think of this identity
protection being offered as you
would a sturdy umbrella you
might use doing a heavy
rainstorm. It gives you some
coverage, but you can still get
wet.credit monitoring service are
after the fact — after something
suspicious or fraudulent might
have happened. The only thing
we have left is to try to catch an
identity thief before too much
damage is done.
Still, you have to take
whatever precautions you can.
With your personal information,
identity thieves can do a lot of
financial harm.
They can trick you into giving
them access to your bank
account, or persuade you to
send them money via gift cards
to avoid the suspension of your
Social Security number. (It’s a
lie.) They can even get medical
treatment using your health
insurance information, leaving
you with the bill.
Here’s something else that is
likely to happen. The scammers
follow the news, too. You will
probably get fake emails and
phone calls about the Equifax
breach and the identity
protection being offered. So,
read the following carefully:
l The email should have the
following address: info@equifax
breachsettlement.com. Triple-
check this before responding or
clicking any links.
l The website to claim the
free daily credit monitoring is at
experianidworks.com/
equifaxsettlement. To get the
service, you will have to enterhad thought the email from
AOL/Verizon was real. In a
security slip, she clicked on a
link and provided key log-in
information, and the crook
ultimately took over her email
account and sent out dozens of
emails asking for money. At
least four of her acquaintances
jumped to help and, in total,
they lost $1,000.
This invasion of your private
email inbox and the phone calls
that force you to screen
everyone are in part due to
massive corporate data
breaches. Our personal
information is so compromised
that it’s exasperating trying to
play detective and figure out
what’s authentic.
It’s ironic that the email
offering protection because of
the Equifax breach is so suspect
that I’m sure many people will
ignore it, as I almost did.
And to add insult to our
privacy injury, to sign up for the
credit monitoring service, being
offered by competitor Experian
IdentityWorks, you have to
provide the very information
that was stolen from Equifax.
So, should you sign up?
The answer falls in the
category of “whatever.”
Even with credit monitoring,
your information can still be
used by identity thieves. The
notices you get as part of ainbox.
I don’t believe for a second
some clinical research project is
going to pay me up to $1,125. I
don’t need a cheap cure for
erectile dysfunction. UPS isn’t
trying to reach me. Samsung,
Lowe’s, Dollar General and
Apple are not giving me $90.
And AOL/Verizon is not
updating my email account.
This last one is a con, and it’s
snaring a lot of victims.
Recently, I received an email
from a friend. It said, “I hope
you’re good, do you order from
Amazon?”
I responded by asking how
her new job was coming.
Then came this request: “I’ve
been trying to purchase a $250
Amazon E-Gift card by email,
but it says they are having
issues charging my card. I
contacted my bank and they
told me it would take a couple
of days to get it sorted. I intend
to buy it for my friend whose
birthday is today. Can you
purchase it from your end for
me, I’ll refund it to you once my
bank sorts the issue out, I
promise.”
My frugal friend would never
make such a request. I knew it
was a scam. But here’s the
problem, the email address was
legit. There were no
misspellings to give away the
criminal. Turns out, my friendguilt, agreed that year to a
settlement with the FTC, the
Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau and 50 states and
territories. Part of that
settlement was providing credit
monitoring.
Because of appeals, the
settlement was not finalized
until last month. Now millions
of people who filed a claim are
getting an email from the
settlement administrator asking
them to sign up for free credit
monitoring for four years, which
covers their files at all three
credit bureaus — Equifax,
Experian and TransUnion.
Let me tell you how this
breach and so many others have
affected my life. I’m sure you
can sympathize, because no
amount of free credit
monitoring is going to make up
for the incessant scam and
sham telephone calls, text
messages and emails.
I regularly get calls to extend
the manufacturer’s car warranty
I never had, or I receive
intimidating voice-mail
messages that the IRS is going
to have me arrested for an
overdue tax bill I don’t owe.
Then there are the
aggravating phishing emails —
hundreds every week. It’s like
playing whack-a-mole at a
carnival. You delete them, but
more keep popping into yourI don’t trust any
email I receive —
even when it’s
coming from
someone I know.
So, when an
email popped
into my inbox
with the subject
line, “Equifax
Breach
Settlement
(Credit Monitoring Instructions
and Activation Code),” I nearly
deleted it.
But, no, it’s real.
In September 2017, Equifax
announced a massive breach
had exposed the personal
information of about 147 million
people. At the time, the
company said hackers exploited
a “website application
vulnerability.” People’s names,
Social Security numbers, birth
dates, addresses — and in some
instances driver’s license
numbers, credit card numbers
and other personal information
— were compromised, putting
millions of folks at risk of
identity theft and other
fraudulent activity.
In a 2019 complaint, the
Federal Trade Commission
alleged that Equifax had failed
to make a patch in its network
after being alerted to the
security vulnerability.
Equifax, without admitting
Inbox full of scams? That Equifax email o≠ering free credit monitoring is legit.
Michelle
Singletary
THE COLOR
OF MONEY
Editor: Suzanne Goldenberg • Art Director: Cece Pascual • Photo Editor: Haley Hamblin • E-mail: [email protected] • Telephone: 202-334-9800 • Mail: The Washington Post, Sunday Business, 1301 K St. NW,
Washington, D.C. 20071 • Advertising: Noelle Wainwright, 202-334-7610, [email protected]BUSINESSDilbert Scott Adamspay and working conditions to
retain and attract more workers,
while the obvious fix in concept,
is complicated in practice. But
diverting higher-paid employees
and bringing in expensive temps
is not cost-effective, and hiring
hastily trained replacements
undermines the quality of the
work. This is especially true in
jobs in which vulnerable clients
depend on trained and dedicated
professionals. When it comes to
quality education and health
care, there is just no substitute.
[email protected]former paralegal in Scottsdale,
Ariz., quit after being ordered to
step in for two mailroom
employees who had contracted
the coronavirus. Boaz had helped
out in the mailroom before on
occasion, but last year decided
that the risk of coronavirus
exposure was too great. “There
were too many anti-vaxxers not
masking in the office and covid
was becoming rampant,” Boaz
said in an email.
This “Great Reshuffle” is not a
sustainable long-term solution.
Granted, improving standardWhen the work is performed
by a mix of regulars and
substitutes, it can cost even
more. In health care, full-time
nurses are working alongside
traveling nurses who make as
much as three times their salary.
Nurses unions have asserted that
hospitals would not need to
spend more in times of crisis if
they maintained adequate full-
time staff and paid them better.
Finally, hiring fill-in workers
won’t help if the problems that
led to vacancies in the first place
aren’t resolved. T.J. Boaz, awere allowed to work fewer
hours from home at their full
rate of pay, while higher-paid
colleagues covered the majority
of their work at the office.
Bringing in substitutes is also
costly. In the cases previously
mentioned, employers are
pulling internal volunteers from
higher-salary brackets. When
that goes on indefinitely,
something has to give: The
higher-wage work gets neglected
or the higher-wage earners get
burned out trying to cover two
jobs.constantly shifting bureaucratic
protocols and government-
mandated curriculums. It also
requires the ability to
accommodate hundreds of
individual students’ needs.
Job swaps are taking place in
other industries as well. A friend
of mine, who is an IT
professional at a major health-
care facility, volunteered for
alternative duty and was
assigned several shifts
supporting the kitchen staff in
preparing meals for patients.
(My friend asked to remain
unnamed because he was not
authorized to speak on behalf of
the organization.) Other
colleagues, he said, were tapped
to be runners, providing general
support to staff and patients. My
friend and his colleagues are
generally happy to help; the
rotations are infrequent and
voluntary, and they’re still being
paid their higher IT salaries.
But even volunteers will draw
the line if they feel they are taken
advantage of. A Chicago IT
supervisor said she and other
senior personnel signed on to
help cover hardware
maintenance at the start of the
pandemic, thinking it would be
for just a few weeks. “We all lived
close [to the office] and wanted
to help out,” she said in an email,
on condition of anonymity
because she’s still in the industry.
After a year, the supervisor said,
she stopped volunteering when
she heard that the original
workers had threatened to get
their union involved if the
company tried to force them into
the office during the pandemic.
As a result, the original workersEvery job has
some “and other
duties as needed”
expectations that
fall outside the
official
description. With
layoffs, illnesses,
resignations and
other losses due
to the coronavirus
pandemic, many
desperate employers are leaning
heavily on that “other duties”
clause to fill staffing gaps, asking
employees to handle additional
tasks that are significantly
different from their daily jobs.
As schools nationwide close
for lack of staff and faculty
during the omicron-variant
surge, state and local
administrative employees and
even National Guard personnel
are being asked to step in. Last
month, the governor of New
Mexico signed up for a rotation
as a substitute teacher. I’ve seen
school newsletters in my
Northern Virginia district
inviting parents and other
community members to sign up
as substitute teachers, cafeteria
workers and school bus drivers.
Many of the burned-out
educators who have vacated
those teaching positions are
moving to IT, health care,
software development and
corporate training. Most are
securing jobs with much higher
pay and better work-life balance
than they had as teachers. As
someone coming from a family
of teachers, I’d be the last to
blame them. Teaching today
demands not just advanced
degrees, but also mastery of
‘Great Reshu±e’: Shifting workers t o plug holes in sta∞ng i s costly, ine≠ective
Work
Advice
KARLA L.
MILLER
If you have a personal finance
question for Michelle, please call 1-
855-ASK-POST (1-855-275-7678). Her
award-winning column The Color of
Money is syndicated by The
Washington Post News Service and
Syndicate and carried in dozens of
newspapers.persuading consumers to start
accounts with FTX than on
branding.
“It’s going to impact how we’re
thought about and framed for a
long time,” he said.
FTX’s own studies have shown
some impact from the ads. The
company found higher brand
awareness in Houston and Atlan-
ta, home to the two teams in the
2021 World Series, where FTX
did a major ad push, as well as
Miami, where the arena is locat-
ed. The company said it doubled
its number of U.S. users in the
final quarter of last year.
FTX’s Super Bowl ad plays on
people’s fear of missing out on
wealth creation from the crypto
industry.
“It certainly hasn’t been the
best last two months for the
digital asset industry, but overall
it has been pretty much the
best-performing sector over the
last year,” Bankman-Fried said.
The FTX ad promises to give
bitcoin to four winners, equiva-
lent to the time that the ad is
shown during the second half of
the game. If the ad appears at
9:45 p.m., for example, each
winner will get 9.45 bitcoin.Tory Newmyer contributed to this
report.last summer to strip new indus-
try reporting requirements from
the Senate infrastructure pack-
age. In one of the latest moves, a
group of top executives that
includes FTX’s CEO of digital
markets, Ryan Salame, formed a
super PAC aiming to spend
$20 million in the midterm elec-
tions on promoting crypto-
friendly candidates.
Sixteen percent of Americans
say they have personally invested
in, traded or used cryptocurren-
cies, according to a Pew Research
Center survey from September.
Some of FTX’s competitors
were also expected to advertise
during the Super Bowl.
Coinbase Global and the Cana-
dian exchange Bitbuy will also
advertise, according to the Wall
Street Journal.
FTX raised $400 million in
January at a $32 billion valua-
tion, doubling its estimated
worth in six months. The latest
round of investors included ven-
ture capital firms such as Soft-
Bank and Tiger Global Manage-
ment, the crypto venture firm
Paradigm and the Ontario Teach-
ers’ Pension Plan Board.
Bankman-Fried, who spoke by
Zoom from his office in the
Bahamas, said the goal of FTX’s
sports partnerships is less abouttomer protections against sys-
temic risk, but also that the U.S.
was a competitive place for the
industry.”
Bankman-Fried attended
meetings in D.C. before last
week’s hearing was announced.
His visit was “trying to inform
people as best I can and be a
resource.”
The broader crypto sector has
been dramatically increasing its
spending on lobbying and politi-
cal activities since losing a bidsight on systemic financial risks,
even as celebrities, influencers
and investors hype crypto as a
means for economic empower-
ment.
Bankman-Fried said lawmak-
ers have shown “a ton of appe-
tite” to develop a U.S. crypto
policy. During the House Finan-
cial Services Committee hearing
in December, when Bankman-
Fried testified, he said he heard
significant interest in “making
sure that we had sufficient cus-massive amount of wealth, but it
has since rebounded to a $2 tril-
lion market cap, according to
CoinMarketCap.
FTX competes with better-
known exchanges such as Coin-
base, which allows users to buy
and trade cryptocurrencies. But
FTX makes most of its revenue
outside the United States, on a
riskier subset of crypto deriva-
tives trading, although some
American traders evade the ban
on offshore exchanges such as
FTX or Binance. The United
States currently does not offer
licenses for crypto derivatives
exchanges. FTX’s American affil-
iate, FTX US, is licensed as a
crypto exchange.
“The U.S. is an important
global hub. What happens in the
U.S. tends to reverberate around
the world quite a bit,” said Bank-
man-Fried, who testified before
Congress l ast week about risks
and regulations around digital
assets.
He testified before Congress
for the first time in December at
a hearing on financial innova-
tion, where executives argued for
light regulation.
The industry’s stupefying
growth has raised concerns
about the lack of protections for
consumers and the lack of over-Bahamas, says the ads are as
much about courting U.S. regula-
tors as getting customers to
download its trading app.
“We want to make sure that
we’re painting, hopefully, a
healthy image of ourselves and
the industry,” said Bankman-
Fried, 29, who has a net worth of
more than $24 billion, according
to Forbes. “We’re optimistic that
we’re going to be able to grow our
U.S. business — a lot of that is
working with U.S. regulators on
bringing new products to mar-
ket.”
The crypto industry includes
virtual currencies such as bitcoin
and Ether, as well as non-fungi-
ble tokens, or NFTs, that can
provide proof of ownership for
assets such as digital images or
weapons within video games.
Both cryptocurrencies and NFTs
are built using an information-
storing technology called block-
chain.
It’s also notoriously volatile.
The global market for crypto
exploded to a $3 trillion market
capitalization late last year,
f ueled by the popularity of NFTs,
which can be used as profile
pictures or collectible art. A
downturn in January wiped out a
SUPER BOWL FROM G1
Crypto firm FTX leverages Super Bowl as a brand builder
EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, which has spent heavily on
sports partnerships to try to boost its name in the crypto industry.