Thank you... words matter... "unwitting victims" would be more like it. Or perhaps "American citizens". As your rhetorical question points out, we are not defined by what we buy.
I did not directly provide my personally identifying information to Equifax, yet they held (and continue to hold) it and disclosed it en masse through their organization's technical incompetence.
I did not "consume" anything from Equifax, and yet, that is the default word that every newspaper writer reaches for whenever they need to refer to a class of people affected by any economic activity.
"Consumer" implies passivity, and in my opinion, leads to a mass culture of learned helplessness and anxiety/depression by implying our only value is our position on the hedonic treadmill. Hyperbolic? Perhaps, but why not choose a different word?
Framing matters. The headline author chose what they thought would be the most salient feature of the class of affected people—or it was chosen for them, by precedent. And I take issue with the idea that we are in any meaningful way "consumers" of Equifax (one interpretation) or that we are best described in an offhand way as taking a passive role in society (another interpretation). Even if the latter is often true, it's something to struggle against, not accept as The Way of Things.
