PSA: Equifax data breach settlement live (free $)
Chances are you were affected by the Equifax data breach and the FTC just opened the claims process. You can either get free credit monitoring or $125 if you already have it (military folks probably do have it due to the OPM breach a few years back). Just go to the FTC website, check your eligibility and file your claim.
https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds/equifax-data-…
Appreciate the info and link provided. Thank you!
I'm still waiting on my settlement from that Milk Lawsuit. Hopefully this one doesn't get gobbled up by the Attorneys like that one.
last fall I spent $75 at a gas station in Chino, California. The only problem was, I haven't been to California in about 10 years and I've NEVER been in Chino. I called my credit union, they cancelled my debit card, I had to go in and fill out a claim form. Within a week the $75 was credited back to my account and I received a new debit card in the mail. All in all, it did consume a couple hours of my life (between phone calls and an unplanned trip to the credit union)... If they want to compensate me for my time, I'll take it.
military folks probably do have it due to the OPM breach a few years back
Anyone who thinks the OPM breach was done to open a credit card in <insert_breached_person's_name> is a damn fool.
The DoD giving us credit monitoring for the OPM breach is a bigger joke.
The OPM breach was for intell purposes plain and simple.
OPM should have resulted in prison terms for a lot of people. The security state of that system was disgusting! And it affected more than just the yourself - it affected family and friends, or whoever you listed as references in security paperwork. Horrible...
Absolutely. Prison for all on that one. But the gov't is so big and bloated hundreds of people can point their finger at one another and go,"it's their fault". So ironically, nothing fucking happens BECAUSE of the idiocy.
But the reason why I made my comment is I think it's laughable that people -- inside the gov't and the general public, think credit monitoring is the fix.
FACT: There have been 0 incidents of identity theft from the OPM breach. What OPM gets you if any vets or family members go to China they get a special handler watching them from the wings.
Or, mostly at the time, Chinese electronic warfare troops trolled those people online to figure out where military members were deployed, try to figure out what they have access to, do they have any Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, etc., contacts, and gather allthe human intelligence they could.
How much of the $5B that Facebook has to pay for security/privacy transgressions am I entitled to?
$125 seems pretty light for having lost personally identifiable information, something for which people can go to jail over divulging. Alas, lawyers negotiate (largely) on behalf of themselves, leaving little for the consumer. Equifax has more to give - $700M doesn't really affect their bottom line, at all. I don't really understand what happened with this Equifax breach, but the chances that someone should be jailed are decent. I doubt anyone was...
If the OPM breach didn't send people to prison, no breach ever will. That was egregious, and under any reasonable interpretation should have resulted in criminal liability for the OPM Director and whatever IT resources were responsible for the sad state of affairs called 'OPM IT infrastructure'...
Agreed that the OPM breach was so much worse. It put a target on millions of security clearance holders AND their families, and yet the payout was zero, just a periodic email notifying me that something "might" be compromised that I started tuning out years ago.
Thanks OP! Wife and I both took the money. We get credit monitoring through a couple of our credit card companies. So it was an easy call.
Thank you for posting this. Very helpful. $125
Ugh dealing with identity theft at the moment. I can blame Equifax and bill for the hours I spent on hold with Sprint, Verizon, and a few banks canceling stuff?
Yes I would definitely claim that! Sorry to hear about your experience, sounds like a nightmare.
Thanks OP! It helps pay for another M football game ticket!
First off, Thanks to OP for the heads-up about this. You're the best around, and nothin's ever gonna keep you down.
2nd: DON'T SETTLE FOR JUST $125!!! You can also claim 10 hours for time spent in Sept 2017 or after, researching/worrying if you were affected by the breach! Those hours are paid at $25 each without having to provide documented proof! THAT TRIPLES THE MONEY TO $375!
3rd: If you were actually affected by the breach, you can get up to $20,000 if you have documented proof!
TAKE THESE JERKS FOR AS MUCH AS YOU CAN, FOLKS!
My issues with this thread and I could have something wrong:
147m impacted
$425m settlement agreement.(the rest at $275m goes directly to states and the CFPB)
As part of the proposed settlement, Equifax will pay $300 million to a fund that will provide affected consumers with credit monitoring services. The fund will also compensate consumers who bought credit or identity monitoring services from Equifax and paid other out-of-pocket expenses as a result of the 2017 data breach. Equifax will add up to $125 million to the fund if the initial payment is not enough to compensate consumers for their losses.
They don't pay funds out on FIFO, they need to wait to see who submits actual damages which can be up to $20k person.
"The settlement administrator will not send out any benefits until they are allowed to do so by the court, which will be January 23, 2020, at the earliest."
That's $2.89 for each person impacted, not including any significant damage claims, which I would estimate pull $100m easily from that pile. Let's call it $2.21 for everyone eligible who has no specific damages. Of this number maybe 1/5 will file a claim. (It may be as high as 1/3 as it takes 90 seconds and they are advertising $125.
If 1/5 file, that's $11.05/person
If 1/3 file, that's $6.63/person
If any meaningful amount of people, for instance 1 million of the 147 million, take the $25 per hour and 10 hours, at $250 per person that requires no proof, there's no money left in the pot in any case.
Before they pay cash they will take out the "Cost" of benefits in the credit monitoring service, which conveniently, they probably do themselves or with their partners.
I would be surprised if they pay much cash, if at all, to anyone other than those who submit actual damages.
People who fill this out are going to be a sucker for a 2nd time in a row, and unfortunately there are highly valuable lists out there of potential suckers. I'm 90% sure the third party aggregating this data, JND Legal Administration, who provides you no assurance they will not take your data and sell it, is one of them. Don't do it.
Does credit monitoring actually do anything helpful?