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Surely the FTC and Equifax saw this coming? 150m people were included in the breach. Only 31m USD was allocated to give anyone who claimed 125 USD? How on earth
by noodlesUK 7y ago
Surely the FTC and Equifax saw this coming? 150m people were included in the breach. Only 31m USD was allocated to give anyone who claimed 125 USD? How on earth did they do this math?
- 1f60c 7y agoMaybe they didn't expect most people to follow up on this?
- VeninVidiaVicii 7y agoThat's obviously the case, which just proves that neither party intended to actually reimburse consumers for our breached data, and the effort to mitigate identity theft.
- aeternus 7y agoOnline is just too easy for people to follow up. Most class-actions require mailing in a form so probably have much lower participation rates.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dzmien 7y agoThe amount of money they set aside only allows for 248,000 people to claim the $125 compensation. That is roughly 0.2% of the total 147 million. Seems a bit off to me, but then again I am not familiar with these kinds of things.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mikeash 7y agoWhat’s more likely: that they didn’t realize that more than 0.1% of the 150 million people affected might sign up for this, or that they don’t give a shit? This all sounds terrible but there are going to be zero consequences.
- Simulacra 7y agoProbably the same math they use to calculate our credit scores and everything else they screw up.
- harryh 7y agoThe math behind credit scores is quite good. They're very effective at predicting credit risk.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y agoIf only they were good at not incorrectly predicting credit risk
- codernyc16 7y agoI had a recent 30 day delinquent payment reduce my credit score by 80 points. And this was because the letter in the mail was mid-delivered. Not that the credit card issuer, nor the credit agencies give two shits. This was after about 5 hours of calls ping-ponging between the two.
- harryh 7y agoYour anecdote is interesting but does not constitute data on the overall predictive powers of credit scores.
- zonidjan 7y agoIt does when millions of people have similar anecdotes, and when the system is literally set up for it. Places can report whatever they want to. And you can dispute it, but the person who report it will just say "no, we're right" and it'll stay up.
- nudiustertian 7y agoThis I've been fighting with Equifax and TransUnion for 5 years to remove 30 year old reports on my credit history (which are clearly not me because im less than 25 years old)
- devoply 7y ago150 million * 120 = eighteen billion... or about 6x their yearly revenue. would've put a dent in their wallet and hopefully caused them to go bankrupt.
- lordlimecat 7y ago>would've put a dent in their wallet and hopefully caused them to go bankrupt. IOW, good luck getting any money from them?
- ma2rten 7y agoProbably they assumed that most people don't have credit monitoring yet and only a few people would go for the $125 option.
- VeninVidiaVicii 7y agoIn any case, I'm not going to trust any of these greedy doddering fools with my information. Their job ALREADY involves monitoring my credit.
- unreal37 7y agoTheir job does not include notifying you of negative changes to your credit though.
- paulgb 7y agoMy guess is they start asking people who already signed up for the $125 for the proof of their credit monitoring. The settlement agreement and the terms we agreed to when accepting the $125 allowed them to do this, and they would probably see the number of claims go down.
- cactus2093 7y agoFWIW Credit Karma just sent out an email that they qualify as a credit monitoring service for this purpose. I would guess the kind of person who is paying enough attention and was willing to spend the few minutes it takes to sign up for this settlement right away, is also using some kind of service like Credit Karma (or Mint might qualify now as well). So a lot of these people might actually have it covered.
- megaremote 7y agoThe same way airlines oversell seats, they don't expect everyone to turn up. But for these claims, they expect the majority not to.
- ohyes 7y agoThey’re coincidentally offering a $125/year service that does the thing that you have to sign up for to get reimbursed the $125 dollars. So basically they’re not offering $125, they’re offering a year of free credit monitoring service. So yeah, $31 million, but they intend to recoup all if not most of it in fees, and then make money the year after when people forget to cancel.
- unreal37 7y agoAny evidence that this "10 years" of credit monitoring automatically renews at $125/year?
- elliekelly 7y agoThis seems to be a more frequent occurrence in the last few years with class action settlements going “viral” for lack of a better word. I believe it’s called dilution of class. In theory I think the judge is supposed to consider the number of class members & their estimated recovery before granting final approval but I suspect by that point nobody cares.
- bradleyjg 7y agoJudges so rarely reject class settlements that treating them as a check on collusion between class attorneys and defendants is a joke.
- jameslevy 7y agoWhy does it even matter how much they allocated? If I allocate $10 to pay my rent, that doesn't mean my rent check will need to be adjusted. They need to allocate more, and if it puts them into bankruptcy (it won't), there are legal processes for handling their liabilities.
- judge2020 7y agoTo put this into perspective: Equifax/Revenue 3.36 billion USD 2017
- g051051 7y agoBecause the purpose of the 31m USD was to compensate people who had bought credit monitoring, spent time dealing with credit reports, freezes, locks, etc. Out of the 147m people who were potentially affected, what percentage actually incurred any real costs vs. the number that rushed to file a claim after the headlines blared "$125 to everyone!"
- paulddraper 7y agoI don't recall $125 requiring actual previously lost time.
- g051051 7y agoI could be mistaken...I thought there was a clause allowing you to claim up to $125 without having to provide detailed breakdowns of the time and expenses.
- Mtinie 7y agoYou could claim up to $20k due to provable loss in addition to the $125 due (if you had existing credit monitoring). Edit: I missed my final line, “So you are right.”
- panny 7y agoIt's very simple. Do you allow a low budget Chinese state sponsored hack to wipe out your country's blue chip company? Do you?