8 ms·
Claiming your $125 from Equifax is a “moral duty”
- dharmon 7y agoDo it anyway, but worth mentioning that the maximum penalty is _not_ $700M, but $31M. If more than 250k(ish) people sign up, the payout per-person goes down. [1] [1] https://twitter.com/rufo/status/1154872589241802753 https://twitter.com/rufo/status/1154872589241802753
- Someone1234 7y agoA lot of the $700M settlement is being used for Equifax to pay itself money for monitoring. They will be giving away their "ID Patrol" product ($16.95/month) for four years, and charging the fund $813/each. Essentially the left hand is going to pay the right hand and it is considered a "fine."
- heavenlyblue 7y agoWhy is that legal?
- __s 7y agoBecause software is handled with leaky metaphors Imagine a defective physical product went out. Then the company sent out repair kits. Those kits have a real cost to produce/ship/etc It would still seem kind of silly that a company is sending me repair kits instead of money I can choose whether to invest in repairs or not, but so it goes
- heavenlyblue 7y agoOK, I can see the metaphor now. I would presume the law is a bit better in the physical world as making repair kits directly impacts your balance that you can’t use for anything else, at the least.
- cco 7y agoI think your analogy misses the key point, that is in your analogy the company that sent out the defective physical product is now "fined" by the US government and forced to send out repair kits to those that request them; when a user requests this repair kit the company charges the fund created by the "fine" $813 to send out the repair kit even though the repair kit cost is pennies. It's racketeering.
- pmiller2 7y agoYour analogy is stillborn. I never ordered the product!
- lotsofpulp 7y agoBecause not enough voters have the time/resources/inclination to make it an issue that can vote in the amount of politicians needed to make it right. All the higher ups get plausible deniability and the headlines in the news, and nine out of ten people’s eyes will glaze over by the time you say conflict of interest.
- heavenlyblue 7y agoNo, look - I get the general idea why the world isn’t the way it could have been. I am asking “what is the logical reasoning behind the decision of the judge in this particular scenario”. The situation may be unfair, but why specifically?
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThe difficulty in being able to assign a numerical value to damages is a big problem, as it allows the defense to contest the claims of the plaintiff very easily. At that point, it just becomes a situation of the plaintiff (and their lawyers) figuring out the likelihood of winning the case multiplied by the winnings, and it wouldn't make sense for the plaintiffs to keep arguing for the maximum (or real value) of damages since it's not "provable" and then you're stuck in appeals and whatnot. I wouldn't think the judge in the case can actually do anything in cases where the plaintiffs and defendants reach an accord, or at least the corruption needs to rise to a level higher than what is seen in this case.
- pmiller2 7y agoI’ve said this before, but assigning monetary damages is easy: poll Equifax’s attorneys (and maybe their execs) about how much it would take for them to be willing to release their entire Equifax file into the public record. Then, actually do it — introduce their entire credit files into the case record. Take the average amount from the poll, multiply by the number of people affected, and there’s your number.
- dehrmann 7y agoIt's actually pretty close to racketeering because they're selling a solution to a problem they created.
- skybrian 7y agoIt's still an expense with no offsetting revenue. (It probably doesn't actually cost them anywhere near $813 to provide, though.)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dmh2000 7y agoyes chances of getting more than a few bucks are slim. $125 is the max payout. if everyone affected signs up the payout is a few cents. so its somewhere in the middle.
- jedimastert 7y agoQuestion that doesn't seem to be answered: If I take this payout now and I find out later that my data has been used and I have to spend time later to fix it, can I come back for the second part of the payout? Edit: Question 12 on their FAQ says I can come back for more if there's damages in the future: https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/faq https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/faq
- maxerickson 7y agoIt also depends on whether there are funds left.
- chkaloon 7y agoIs there a way to absolutely verify that this website is, in fact, the correct one and not a scam to collect personal info? Ironically, if they had used the Equifax domain instead of equifaxbreachsettlement.com I would have felt more comfortable filling out that form.
- mLuby 7y agoYes, you can get to it from FTC.gov: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds/equifax-data-breach-settlement https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds/eq...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jjw1414 7y agoAgreed. Possibly Equifax consciously chose a "scammy-sounding" domain to deter individuals from filing a claim.
- JeremyBanks 7y agoThis is what every class action lawsuit is like.
- ameliaquining 7y agoNo, they didn't choose the domain at all. It doesn't belong to them; it belongs to the people managing the settlement.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Whatarethese 7y agoBasically all class action lawsuit websites have sketchy URL's and appearances. This seems to be par for the course and might deter people from signing up which just puts more money back in Equifax's pocket.
- igotsideas 7y agoIs anyone thinking about taking them to small claims court? I remembering reading people were getting around 8k just for showing up.
- astura 7y agoI'd imagine you'd only have a chance to win by default judgment unless you can someht prove Equifax caused you monetary loss, which would be extremely difficult. Can you share the docket numbers of people getting $8k default judgements?
- igotsideas 7y agoI can't find exactly what I read but found some other pieces. https://blog.legalist.com/i-won-8-000-from-equifax-in-small-claims-court-heres-how-you-can-too-f0ce6925c079 https://blog.legalist.com/i-won-8-000-from-equifax-in-small-... This is a guide to taking them to small claims. I haven't followed any of these so I don't know how valid they are. https://myradvocate.com/Your%20Guide%20to%20Sue%20Equifax%20in%20Small%20Claims%20Court https://myradvocate.com/Your%20Guide%20to%20Sue%20Equifax%20...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- avsteele 7y agoYou can't claim the $125 unless you assert you currently have credit monitoring and will for >= 6 months. You can't just go and claim $125 without lying or giving your info to some additional org to enroll in credit monitoring.
- notyourwork 7y agoA lot of credit cards offer credit monitoring now a days.
- addicted 7y agoMost banks offer some sort of credit monitoring service, so you could leverage that.
- nemothekid 7y agoIf you have a credit card (I can say for sure, any Amex card and any Capital One Card), and you plan to keep those cards for 6 months, then you satisfy the requirement
- kgwxd 7y agoI was thinking about that, do those count? If so, do you have a source other than a random-fish-child-on-the-internet? Edit: Nevermind, "to the best of my knowledge" the free-for-everyone Capital One CreditWise service qualifies.
- jumbopapa 7y agoIs Credit Karma considered credit monitoring? They email me when any events take place.
- propogandist 7y agoNo, Credit Karma is a data mining front operation that takes the access you give them about your finances and sells them to other companies. Reliable financial data is hard for marketing companies to gather about individuals, CreditKarma solves that problem. If you read their privacy policy and ToS you'll learn they are able to sell your data as part of all the free services they provide you.
- basilgohar 7y agoThere are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to begin. While I agree with the premise that we should make security breaches as painful and expensive as possible for negligent parties such as Equifax, the manner of this claim feels completely off. For starters, I have to submit information to a 3rd party, and that in fact will start a process that I, as a victim (potentially, at least) of Equifax's negligence, must complete. Moreover, even the actual damages I will be entitled to is quite unknown. I realize a lot of this is due to class action law, but it's still woefully insufficient. Furthermore, reading through the fine print, at least according to other analysis I've read about it, you also have to enroll or already be enrolled in some kind of identity protection program (such as what Equifax offers themselves). So, I would to have to opt-in to a system I am trying to stay out of in the first place. And why do I even have to confirm my info? If Equifax has it already, then they should reach out to me, as a victim of their negligence. There is more, but these are the most glaring issues. I realize there's not a lot that can be done, but these factors give me a strong distaste for this and I think we are deluded in thinking this will actually amount to anything more than a slap on this wrist or even cost them much of anything. It's going to cost them up to $31 million based on people's claims. It likely won't cost them more by me filling out the claims, but it will cost me as I'll have to become further entrenched in a monitoring system that got us into this mess in the first place.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y agoI mailed my paper claim in yesterday. It only asked your name, address, and birth year. Nothing else.
- woriuweflksdncn 7y agoBut were you an adult when the breach happened? The paper form says this: "If you were over the age of 18 on May 13, 2017, and wish to file a claim form, visit www.EquifaxBreachSettlement.com. Do not use this claim form."
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
- code4tee 7y agoActually looks like everyone should claim 20 hours of your time wasted at $25 an hour and get $500 (Option 2 listed). I certainly had a lot of time wasted trying to figure out what to do and then taking more actions to protect from possible consequences of their screw up.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoYou won’t get it because the fund for $125 and $250 penalties are $31M each, so it will be prorated down if number of claims exceed the maximum number allowed for a $125/$250 claim.
- code4tee 7y agoAgree everyone will end up getting a cheque for like $4 or something, but doesn’t hurt to make the claim.
- Merad 7y agoYou have to include supporting documentation if you claim > 10 hours spent.
- sgc 7y agoI am on the opposite end of the time spectrum, but I claimed one hour for research and monitoring, and $1 for printing and mailing the form, just as a matter of principle.
- leetbulb 7y agoWould love to just out of principal, but I did not lose any money or provably waste any time due to the breach.
- idiotclock 7y agoNo need for that, you get the settlement as long as your information was compromised
- sgc 7y agoYou are on this thread doing research right now.
- sam0x17 7y ago10 hours and under they don't require any proof, as per the directions on the form. The $125 is available to anyone who was in the breach. Since my husband and I signed up for LifeLock shortly after the breach, and (to our recollection) spent at least 10 hours going through our bank accounts and financial records to check for fraudulent charges, we should be getting around $800 each. You only need documentation for time spent if you go over that 10 hour mark. For LifeLock documentation, we just submitted our LifeLock billing history page as a PDF.
- danShumway 7y agoI've seen a couple of people check to see if they're eligible and get back an answer of "no". This is a pure curiosity question, but I didn't think Equifax knew which numbers had and hadn't been leaked -- my impression was just that hackers got access to the full database. When the original announcement came out, wasn't there a big thing about how they were basically flipping a coin and returning a random result every time you checked if you were affected? Are they really able to determine which social security numbers were stolen?
- xoa 7y ago>diverted to anti-identity-theft measures and charities [...] identity protection[...] This is not to rag on boingboing in particular at all, this sort of language has become ubiquitous, but it's still incredibly frustrating. I have to wonder if "identity theft" represents one of the most effective bits of propaganda/doublespeak ever coined. The very wording flips around cause and effect and in turn responsibility. In reality people don't generally get their identities stolen, institutions/organizations fail to properly verify it. If someone claiming to be me applies for some financial service and the bank goes ahead and grants it, it's not that my "identity was stolen" it's that the bank/industry did a piss poor job of verifying it. It should be between them and the party that committed fraud, and if they go after me instead then they too should be punished for it as literal accessories to the fraud. Instead we've ended up with this madness where parties A & B can do a transaction, and then party C can end up being pinned with it without ever having so much as a single interaction with A or B. There has been an internalized sense of helplessness and blame shifting that has allowed the industry to skate by something that we absolutely have the technology and economics to solve to a high degree. The article is not wrong that we should expend some effort to try to make sure that at least this minimal fine sticks a bit, but I resent having to be involved at all and having to give my info yet again to the guilty and having to buy into their root cursed fraud scheme and jump through their hoops. What's really needed is a blanket law stating something along the lines that no unconnected 3rd party is ever liable for transactions between others, and that anyone who then goes after them for it is not only strictly liable for all expenses and damages but also minimum 3x punitive damages as well and some minimum flat level per incident too.
- robbiep 7y agoI agree in sentiment however then the burden shifts to proving that person C was not really person A, and therein lies the crux
- lotsofpulp 7y agoWhat's the problem with that? We have cameras, passwords, tokens, witnesses. Tell credit issuers to demand photo of person holding up ID and a thumbs up instead of just typing in a social security number. If that still results in too much fraud, then the lender is incentivized to do more research and verify in person that the person is who they say they are. Right now, in the interest of increasing commerce, we're forcing everyone in society to bear the burden of this specific fraud and the benefits go to the lenders. If person A is being defrauded by person B pretending to be person C, then person C has no reason to be involved unless they aided person B.
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoI have a proposal, and I am certainly not the right person to implement it, but I hope that someone reads this and will. I would love to dedicate my $125 (assuming I am part of the breach, which is almost certain) to the pursuit of damage, and possibly incarceration, for the Equifax CEO and top executives at the company. Give me a reputable law firm willing to take my donation, with clear use of proceedings. I bet thousands of people would love to spend that $125 this way.
- Whatarethese 7y agoI will donate my money for this quest. I will mail him shit for the next half year.
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoWhat would be the simplest way to enlist, say, 1,000 people and then reach out to a few law firms? A blog post? A mailing list? Else?
- bmiller2 7y agoMaybe a gofundme campaign? The platform already exists and is familiar to most people.
- IceWreck 7y agoWhy do boingboing articles make their way to this forum? Its an opinion based kinda joke website that just posts content sourced from other websites, then adds their own opinions on that. Yes its articles are somewhat fun to read, but when posting to HN, just post the real article, which is always linked in the website.
- OnlyRepliesToBS 7y agounsubscribe
- bitxbit 7y agoI believe we need to move away from fines and force corporations to give up voting shares. A special class of shares with little to no financial benefit held by public trusts.
- crazygringo 7y agoI don't think that will work because... 1) If the public trust doesn't reach 50% of voting shares then what difference will it make? 2) If the public trust does reach 50%, then it's no longer a for-profit company, but rather full socialist government/public control of the economy Fines are fine -- they reduce the value of shares and therefore the bottom line. They just need to consistently outweigh the potential profits from bad behavior. If fines are too low, the solution isn't to find another fix -- it's just to raise fines more.
- ryani 7y agoYou don't need to have 50% of voting shares to have significant power over a company, if no one organization has 50% of voting shares. If you have 10% of shares and two other organizations have 45% each, and those two organizations have a conflict, you get to choose which of those two organizations has control over the company. Those organizations are both incentivized to make your needs a priority in order to secure your votes. In this situation no single group can choose the destiny of the company without the assistance of one of the other groups.
- crazygringo 7y agoWow... it really is easy and takes only about 60 seconds to do, and doesn't require signing up for any new services or anything. I'm kind of amazed. Just go to: https://equifaxbreachsettlement.com https://equifaxbreachsettlement.com You put in your last name and the last 6 digits of your SSN (not full SSN), it tells you if you were impacted, you give your full contact info, select the option for $125, it gives you an option for check or gift card, and done. Legally it requires that you already have some form of credit monitoring, which from other comments here seems that many credit cards already include (mine do, e.g. Capital One). But... I'm kind of amazed it's so easy. This really ought to be done by everyone who already has a credit card that provides free credit monitoring. I never thought I'd get to have a little feeling of personally holding Equifax accountable in a small way, but here we are. :)
- scarface74 7y agoIt didn’t ask for my social security number. I would have remembered. I don’t know my wife’s ssn by heart and I filled it out for her.
- crazygringo 7y agoYou're right... if you click "File a claim today" at the top it doesn't ask for your SSN. If you scroll down and click "Find out if your information is impacted" that's where you put in the last 6 digits of your SSN and it tells you, and then brings you straight to the form if you're eligible. I'm not sure what will happen if you file your claim but you weren't affected... it might just be ignored then?
- novaleaf 7y agoTip on claiming 10hrs: I don't think it's hard for anyone to claim 10hrs on this. Just reading the news/basic research over the last 1.5 years can quickly reach 10hrs. For me, I also signed up for credit monitoring a month after the breach announcement and have since been getting spammed every week with various credit alerts. If I spent 10 min on each mail and got 1 email/week over the last 1.5 years that would be 13 hours of pondering credit spam.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoIs it safe to look up your name on the look up tool? It is demanding access to recaptcha, which I avoid these days.
- winslow 7y agoYou avoid recaptcha or looking up your name on the tool? Either way I'm curious why you avoid it?
- mixmastamyk 7y agoWas explained here recently as another way for Google to track what you're doing.
- winslow 7y agoInteresting I assume you are referring to this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20294801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20294801
- ohyeshedid 7y agoRecaptcha is a concern, considering the information being requested, but this is worse: https://i.imgur.com/ARPFyFl.png https://i.imgur.com/ARPFyFl.png
- waynecochran 7y agoIt is idiotic to fill out the form. They want my name plus the last six digits of my SSN! That leaves only a puny 3 digits unknown. This is why there is identity theft in the first place.
- lisper 7y agoYou must be looking at the wrong form. To claim the $125 they ask for your name, mailing address, phone number, email address and birth year. That's it.
- jedberg 7y agoThey asked for the first 6 of the SSN to see if you qualify.
- lisper 7y agoBut you don't have to see if you qualify. You can just go straight to the claim form: https://secure.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/en/claim https://secure.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/en/claim and let them sort it out.
- tossAfterUsing 7y agoI follow BoingBoing on instagram, and it's a bit of a weird thing that they're always telling me what my "moral duty" is...
- lisper 7y agoOriginal source of this idea (referenced in the OP): https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/equifax-settlement-money-how-to-claim.html?via=homepage_taps_top https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/equifax-settlement-mone...
- satya71 7y agoI think the best course is actually to opt-out and reserve the right to a lawsuit when your identity gets stolen eventually. Wish there was a simple point-and-click letter generator to opt-out. The govt makes opt-out hard.
- purplezooey 7y agoLike the 2003-ish tax refund checks under GWB it feels like a bribe to accept something that should be unacceptable.
- mindgam3 7y agoNote: you only get $125 if you previously paid for credit monitoring. If not, your "payout" from this settlement will simply be a few years of free monitoring. Not terrible, but not quite as exciting as the free money you'd expect from the headline.
- ohyeshedid 7y agoLast night when I went and took a look at the claims site, I noticed they were loading Facebook and twitter scripts.[1] These scripts were even on the pages that ask for PII. I can no longer get back to the form page to get a screenshot as it's 403, for me, now. I would definitely suggest not using the online claim form, as they've polluted that with tracking. [1]: https://i.imgur.com/ARPFyFl.png https://i.imgur.com/ARPFyFl.png
- dylan604 7y agoPre-paid card vs check? Which option did you go with?
- pmiller2 7y agoHere’s what I don’t understand: my payout with credit monitoring is worth $125, and without credit monitoring its “worth” over $800. If you multiply $125 by the number of people affected, that value exceeds Equifax’s market cap. Why does Equfax deserve to survive if they literally caused more damage than the market thinks they’re worth?