5 ms·

Where are you getting 2% from? The 77.5 is roughly 20% of the settlement fund Or if you want to include the crap credit monitoring it is 11% of the total 700

Where are you getting 2% from? The 77.5 is roughly 20% of the settlement fund Or if you want to include the crap credit monitoring it is 11% of the total 700 In either case no one will be getting near 125 but still 80 million is quite a lot for them...

tomnipotent 7y ago
> 80 million is quite a lot for them Against $3.5bln in 2019 revenues? That's not really a lot at all.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  Why are you comparing how much the lawyers get to Equifax revenue?
  - geofft 7y ago
    Because the point of the settlement, in theory, is A) for Equifax to be sufficiently disincentivized from being careless again B) restitution for victims. In my opinion as a victim, amount of the settlement (paid to lawyers or otherwise) is too small to accomplish A, and the amount paid to lawyers, if redirected to victims, is still too small to accomplish B. These are the only things that feel relevant to compare the amount to. If the two sides negotiated a settlement that involved a serious change of business practices at Equifax, a significant payout to meaningfully compensate victims, and a chocolate cake for every retired librarian in Tallahassee, I'd be slightly confused but I would be unequivocally happier with that settlement than the current one. While you could probably save a bit of money on the chocolate cakes, it would be much smaller than any of the other amounts in the case, and saving that money wouldn't have any real impact on the settlement actually doing what it needed to do.
    - zamadatix 7y ago
      Spending nearly $80,000,000.00 on lawyers didn't seem to explain to the court or FTC that the settlement should have been higher than mere dollars per person so I'm not sure how spending e.g. $800,000,000.00 on lawyers is supposed to result in anything beyond even less making it out to actual compensation. It's not like there was some busy public defender that didn't have time to think "gee, these people deserve more than a couple bucks and the company is probably going to make money off this 'fine' once the yearly renewal kicks in for those that opted for the coverage how can we argue a stronger deal" there was a high end team that made bank on a deal they knew they were the only ones making real money on regardless of what the deal was.
      - geofft 7y ago
        I don't disagree about the part that lawyers enriched ourselves, but like the librarians eating cake in Tallahassee, I don't really care about that, personally. I do disagree with the part about spending $800M on lawyers - if that came out of Equifax's own pocket, that would be ten times more effective at B than spending $80M. If you made them spend $8B on lawyers, Equifax might well shut down, and scare the other credit reporting agencies into behaving. That is valuable to me. I'll be honest, as a victim, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with $125, either. I expect most people will spend it on themselves, but even spending it on credit monitoring doesn't actually fix the problem, it just makes the problem a little less bad, maybe, at the cost of enriching other companies that depend on this ecosystem of profiting off other people's data. I would genuinely prefer a settlement that cost Equifax $800M and got me nothing to one that cost $80M and got me $125.
        zamadatix 7y ago
        The lawyer pool isn't "in addition to" it comes "out of" the settlement amount that was already decided previously. I.e. the difference between 80 million and 800 million in lawyer fees is exactly 720 million that was supposed to have gone to compensation going to the lawyers instead.
        geofft 7y ago
        OK, but the settlement was $380 million. There was no $720 million that was supposed to go to the lawyers (or to anyone else). If the lawyers had instead negotiated a settlement that got them fees of $800 million, then, because as you say the fees come out of the settlement amount, the settlement would have to be at least $800 million. That would be good for me, as a victim, because it would have meant a larger penalty to Equifax.
- cobookman 7y ago
  Revenue isn't the same as profit. " Net income attributable to Equifax of $299.8 million was down 49 percent compared to the full year 2017. " https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equifax-releases-fourth-quarter-2018-results-300799253.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equifax-releases-fo...
  - geofft 7y ago
    How much of their expenses are payroll, and in particular, executive payroll?
    - mikekchar 7y ago
      https://www1.salary.com/EQUIFAX-INC-Executive-Salaries.html https://www1.salary.com/EQUIFAX-INC-Executive-Salaries.html Apparently the CEO got $20 million in salary. Edit: The more relevant number is the $6 million the CTO got! Man I suck: At least the Chief Information Security Officer got less than $4 million.
patrickyeon 7y ago
"2% of the shortfall", which would mean "2% of the 119$ less than the 125$ I could've been getting".
x2f10 7y ago
>80 million is quite a lot for them... Equifax should pay damages related to the severity of the breach not to the size of their bank account.
- stan_rogers 7y ago
  "Them", in this case, would be the lawyers.

tomnipotent 7y ago

> 80 million is quite a lot for them Against $3.5bln in 2019 revenues? That's not really a lot at all.

zamadatix 7y ago
Why are you comparing how much the lawyers get to Equifax revenue?
- geofft 7y ago
  Because the point of the settlement, in theory, is A) for Equifax to be sufficiently disincentivized from being careless again B) restitution for victims. In my opinion as a victim, amount of the settlement (paid to lawyers or otherwise) is too small to accomplish A, and the amount paid to lawyers, if redirected to victims, is still too small to accomplish B. These are the only things that feel relevant to compare the amount to. If the two sides negotiated a settlement that involved a serious change of business practices at Equifax, a significant payout to meaningfully compensate victims, and a chocolate cake for every retired librarian in Tallahassee, I'd be slightly confused but I would be unequivocally happier with that settlement than the current one. While you could probably save a bit of money on the chocolate cakes, it would be much smaller than any of the other amounts in the case, and saving that money wouldn't have any real impact on the settlement actually doing what it needed to do.
  - zamadatix 7y ago
    Spending nearly $80,000,000.00 on lawyers didn't seem to explain to the court or FTC that the settlement should have been higher than mere dollars per person so I'm not sure how spending e.g. $800,000,000.00 on lawyers is supposed to result in anything beyond even less making it out to actual compensation. It's not like there was some busy public defender that didn't have time to think "gee, these people deserve more than a couple bucks and the company is probably going to make money off this 'fine' once the yearly renewal kicks in for those that opted for the coverage how can we argue a stronger deal" there was a high end team that made bank on a deal they knew they were the only ones making real money on regardless of what the deal was.
    - geofft 7y ago
      I don't disagree about the part that lawyers enriched ourselves, but like the librarians eating cake in Tallahassee, I don't really care about that, personally. I do disagree with the part about spending $800M on lawyers - if that came out of Equifax's own pocket, that would be ten times more effective at B than spending $80M. If you made them spend $8B on lawyers, Equifax might well shut down, and scare the other credit reporting agencies into behaving. That is valuable to me. I'll be honest, as a victim, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with $125, either. I expect most people will spend it on themselves, but even spending it on credit monitoring doesn't actually fix the problem, it just makes the problem a little less bad, maybe, at the cost of enriching other companies that depend on this ecosystem of profiting off other people's data. I would genuinely prefer a settlement that cost Equifax $800M and got me nothing to one that cost $80M and got me $125.
      - zamadatix 7y ago
        The lawyer pool isn't "in addition to" it comes "out of" the settlement amount that was already decided previously. I.e. the difference between 80 million and 800 million in lawyer fees is exactly 720 million that was supposed to have gone to compensation going to the lawyers instead.
        geofft 7y ago
        OK, but the settlement was $380 million. There was no $720 million that was supposed to go to the lawyers (or to anyone else). If the lawyers had instead negotiated a settlement that got them fees of $800 million, then, because as you say the fees come out of the settlement amount, the settlement would have to be at least $800 million. That would be good for me, as a victim, because it would have meant a larger penalty to Equifax.
cobookman 7y ago
Revenue isn't the same as profit. " Net income attributable to Equifax of $299.8 million was down 49 percent compared to the full year 2017. " https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equifax-releases-fourth-quarter-2018-results-300799253.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equifax-releases-fo...
- geofft 7y ago
  How much of their expenses are payroll, and in particular, executive payroll?
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    https://www1.salary.com/EQUIFAX-INC-Executive-Salaries.html https://www1.salary.com/EQUIFAX-INC-Executive-Salaries.html Apparently the CEO got $20 million in salary. Edit: The more relevant number is the $6 million the CTO got! Man I suck: At least the Chief Information Security Officer got less than $4 million.

patrickyeon 7y ago

"2% of the shortfall", which would mean "2% of the 119$ less than the 125$ I could've been getting".

x2f10 7y ago

>80 million is quite a lot for them... Equifax should pay damages related to the severity of the breach not to the size of their bank account.

stan_rogers 7y ago
"Them", in this case, would be the lawyers.