Author Archives: Brian Wolfman

Does federal law contemplate a ban on the marketing of drugs and other medical products for unapproved, “off-label” uses?

That's the topic of this article by law prof Nathan Cortez. Here's the abstract: The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) does not expressly prohibit companies from marketing or promoting drugs for unapproved, "off-label" uses. The FDA itself acknowledges that off-label promotion is not a "prohibited act" under the statute, or an element of any such […]

Massachusetts sues Equifax over the hack under its consumer-protection statute

As explained in this detailed press release, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey today filed the nation’s first enforcement action against Equifax alleging that the company failed to protect the personal information of almost three million Massachusetts residents. Healey claims that “that Equifax knew about the vulnerabilities in its system for months, but utterly failed to keep the […]

More details on how the Equifax hack happened

This Wall Street Journal report gives more details on how the Equifax hack happened — more for me, at least. The report also includes this statement suggesting that Equifax's security is not so great: Alex Holden, chief information security officer of identity-theft monitoring company Hold Security LLC, says Equifax has long been considered a target for identity […]

Ed Mierzwinski’s blog post on republican efforts to weaken regulation of credit reporting agencies (posted just before Equifax made public its security breach)

Just two days before Equifax made public the massive hack of sensitive information of 143 million Americans — which Equifax kept secret for many weeks — U.S PIRG's Ed Mierzwinski posted this piece criticizing the three credit reporting agencies for their incompetence and congressional republicans for seeking to deregulate the industry. Here's an excerpt: What would you do […]

Public utility regulation for credit reporting agencies?

Over at Credit Slips, law prof Adam Levitin has written Equifax: A Call for Public Utility Regulation of Consumer Reporting Agencies. It's a comprehensive and interesting post, and it's worth reading the whole thing. He starts by explaining the hacking of Equifax in plain terms — what it was (for instance, how it is different from […]

Thousands of small-claims suits against Equifax, thanks to technology

This article by Gabrielle Hernandez explains that Chatbot company DoNotPay released a set of chatbots that can help consumers sue Equifax for negligence. Users provide their name and address to the bot, and it feeds the information into a state-designated form users can then print and file directly with the court. DoNotPay’s Equifax bots were first […]