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You Have a Moral Obligation to Claim Your $125 from Equifax

29 points by ForHackernews 7y ago

black_puppydog 7y ago
A new and exciting chapter from the book of "Privacy as personal responsability" From the publisher of classics such as: Climate Change is a matter of personal choices. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. Vote with your wallet, even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts!
- mindslight 7y ago
  Erm, this is like a simulation of personal responsibility at best. Real personal responsibility is leaking as little information as possible to these fuckers in the first place. Which, given that government will generally condone private surveillance companies for its own interests, is necessary. Although as you imply, it is not sufficient. But this is the best collective action we can get right now, so why not? Some actual direct action would certainly be a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately nobody has yet taken Fight Club as a how-to.
  - ForHackernews 7y ago
    > Real personal responsibility is leaking as little information as possible to these fuckers in the first place. In the case of credit rating agencies, it's literally impossible to live as an American citizen who interacts with the modern financial system and not have your information end up in their databases. Your advice is unhelpful because most people are not prepared to drop completely off the grid, pay for everything in cash or cryptocurrency, and consign themselves to never taking out a loan owning a home.
    - mindslight 7y ago
      That is why I said as little as possible. Your reductio ad absurdum is unwarranted. And yeah, it does take effort, and you will never get 100% of the way there. But there is plenty of low hanging fruit to pull back on, like relearning to visit the ATM and not use a credit card for routine purchases like groceries. Or when you receive your yearly privacy notice from a bank, actually call up and limit the sharing. Skip answering extra questions when they ask you to "update your information", and when signing up for something choose to perform verification via postal mail or only answer questions that Google can answer ("which city is Foo Street in") rather than confirming what is in their surveillance databases. And certainly don't sign up for businesses who's entire revenue model is based around facilitating access to your surveillance profile (CreditKarma, Mint, etc). Acting like it's an absolutely helpless situation because the reporting generally centers around the concerns of the identity verification industry itself (oh no, people's already-public SSNs are more widely known!) is missing the real damage these companies do to individuals' privacy. Also none of those three general of avenues (personal responsibility, collective action, direct action) is some immediate perfect solution - the only hope we have is long term culture change based on little steps in each area.
thedanbob 7y ago
This argument doesn't work when you consider that the payout isn't $125 per person, it's "a small percentage of $700m divided by the number of claimants (capped at $125)" per person[1]. Equifax doesn't get hurt any extra no matter how many people claim the money. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/26/8932398/equifax-settlement-125-claim-wont-get-money-alternative-reimbursement-compensation https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/26/8932398/equifax-settlemen...
- Qwertystop 7y ago
  Equifax gets hurt a little bit extra for each person up until 5.6 million people are claiming, by those numbers.
  - thedanbob 7y ago
    Ok, I exaggerated a little. But only $31m is earmarked for cash payments so they only get hurt by the first 248,000 people who submit claims.
    - ForHackernews 7y ago
      How many people have submitted claims so far?
      - LocalH 7y ago
        Probably far more, given the fact that this info seems to be spreading fairly well. I'm certain that by the time it's all over, so many people will have filed claims that the individual payout will be substantially less than $125.

29 points by ForHackernews 7y ago

A new and exciting chapter from the book of "Privacy as personal responsability" From the publisher of classics such as: Climate Change is a matter of personal choices. Guns don't kill people. People kill people. Vote with your wallet, even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts!

mindslight 7y ago
Erm, this is like a simulation of personal responsibility at best. Real personal responsibility is leaking as little information as possible to these fuckers in the first place. Which, given that government will generally condone private surveillance companies for its own interests, is necessary. Although as you imply, it is not sufficient. But this is the best collective action we can get right now, so why not? Some actual direct action would certainly be a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately nobody has yet taken Fight Club as a how-to.
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  > Real personal responsibility is leaking as little information as possible to these fuckers in the first place. In the case of credit rating agencies, it's literally impossible to live as an American citizen who interacts with the modern financial system and not have your information end up in their databases. Your advice is unhelpful because most people are not prepared to drop completely off the grid, pay for everything in cash or cryptocurrency, and consign themselves to never taking out a loan owning a home.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    That is why I said as little as possible. Your reductio ad absurdum is unwarranted. And yeah, it does take effort, and you will never get 100% of the way there. But there is plenty of low hanging fruit to pull back on, like relearning to visit the ATM and not use a credit card for routine purchases like groceries. Or when you receive your yearly privacy notice from a bank, actually call up and limit the sharing. Skip answering extra questions when they ask you to "update your information", and when signing up for something choose to perform verification via postal mail or only answer questions that Google can answer ("which city is Foo Street in") rather than confirming what is in their surveillance databases. And certainly don't sign up for businesses who's entire revenue model is based around facilitating access to your surveillance profile (CreditKarma, Mint, etc). Acting like it's an absolutely helpless situation because the reporting generally centers around the concerns of the identity verification industry itself (oh no, people's already-public SSNs are more widely known!) is missing the real damage these companies do to individuals' privacy. Also none of those three general of avenues (personal responsibility, collective action, direct action) is some immediate perfect solution - the only hope we have is long term culture change based on little steps in each area.

thedanbob 7y ago

This argument doesn't work when you consider that the payout isn't $125 per person, it's "a small percentage of $700m divided by the number of claimants (capped at $125)" per person[1]. Equifax doesn't get hurt any extra no matter how many people claim the money. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/26/8932398/equifax-settlement-125-claim-wont-get-money-alternative-reimbursement-compensation https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/26/8932398/equifax-settlemen...

Qwertystop 7y ago
Equifax gets hurt a little bit extra for each person up until 5.6 million people are claiming, by those numbers.
- thedanbob 7y ago
  Ok, I exaggerated a little. But only $31m is earmarked for cash payments so they only get hurt by the first 248,000 people who submit claims.
  - ForHackernews 7y ago
    How many people have submitted claims so far?
    - LocalH 7y ago
      Probably far more, given the fact that this info seems to be spreading fairly well. I'm certain that by the time it's all over, so many people will have filed claims that the individual payout will be substantially less than $125.