16 ms·
Tell HN: I just received my Equifax breach settlement check
For a total of $5.21
- schlauerfox 4y agoRisk management lawyers earned their millions, it seems. Hard to stay optimistic when nobody is holding big players accountable for hurting people.
- WheelsAtLarge 4y agoIt looks about right. I've yet to see a class action suit where the individuals get any substantial money. I've heard of one where the settlement involved coupons for the product rather than cash.
- barbariangrunge 4y agoRed bull
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoIt’s usually only 1 year of identity theft monitoring from some cheap under-equipped company to actually do anything about it!
- wiseleo 4y agoEquifax comes to mind.
- mysterydip 4y agoI was happy with the amount received from this one: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/08/27/apple-class-action-settlement-ios-developers/ https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/08/27/apple-class-acti...
- dugmartin 4y agoI have a high school buddy that is a big class action lawyer. When he posts about winning a big case I’m always holding back from commenting asking how much he got paid vs the folks that were actually harmed.
- bee_rider 4y agoMaybe you can bring it up in a way that appears guileless rather than accusatory? “Nice job dude! I bet you really helped out the victims — how much did you get them?”
- 1123581321 4y agoHe would reply with big numbers: $100, $500 million, and so on. They don’t really communicate publicly in terms of the payout per capita although they do negotiate hard to increase the per capita payout (otherwise the total would be small.)
- chadash 4y agoOn one hand, yes, it's a shame that the victims rarely get anything. On the other hand, anyone is allowed to opt out and sue on their own if they want to. The problem is that very few will because it's not worth your time or money to sue someone for, say, $1000. As someone who wasn't going to take Equifax to court, I prefer an outcome where some lawyer gets rich, I get $5, and Equifax gets a $500 million dollar fine plus a commitment to spend $1 billion on overhauling their security. The alternative was Equifax getting away with a few small-scale lawsuits that would have had total payouts in the low millions. In a more just world, Equifax would go out of business and the assets would be divided among the affected parties. The fact that that won't happen isn't your buddy's fault. At the end of the day, sure, he gets high fees, but if the lawyers in the equifax case were to distribute their fees to victims, maybe I would have gotten $6 instead of $5? My point is, I'm mad at Equifax a lot more so than your buddy.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoAll of the class actions where I've gotten back $5 or whatever have a document listing how the money is spent. Usually at least a third of it goes to the lawyers.
- chadash 4y agoThe court awarded attorney fees of 20% of the overall (minimum) award in this case, which came to about $77 million. This is based off a $380.5 million minimum settlement fund (under certain conditions the fund can go up to $100-something million higher). source: https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/admin/services/connectedapps.cms.extensions/1.0.0.0/927686a8-4491-4976-bc7b-83cccaa34de0_1033_EFX_Final_Approval_Order_(1.13.2020).pdf https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/admin/services/conne...
- jlund-molfese 4y agoI got $397.00 from a Facebook biometrics class action settlement in Illinois, out of a $650M settlement. But yes, definitely the exception rather than the rule. https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/heres-a-look-at-all-the-settlements-stemming-from-illinois-biometric-privacy-act/2922736 https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/heres-a-look-at-all-th...
- judge2020 4y agoabout $30 from the Plaid class-action here.
- jawns 4y agoKeep in mind that class actions necessarily exist as a middle-ground mechanism. If the harm to each person were large enough, they would pursue individual claims. But in many cases, it is not worth people's time to pursue individual claims because the damage is relatively minor. A little bit of harm spread over a large enough population, however, becomes a large amount of harm in the aggregate, so class actions are a mechanism for holding companies accountable in those situations. So you would not expect individual members of the class to be getting huge payouts. But you expect that the company is held accountable for the aggregate harm in a way that, if not for class actions, they would likely never be held accountable for.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoI would argue they have the opposite effect: They allow businesses a way to write off a crime with a minimal payout to some subset the harmed individuals, in exchange for the ability to be completely absolved of future lawsuits by people who were unaware at the time.
- rendaw 4y agoI was recently in a settlement for something like $4 and looked into it. My take is basically that in many class action suits there's limited proof of wrongdoing. So it might not make it to court, and if it did make it to court it might be thrown out. Companies pay out since they aren't sure either, but not for the full amount. The lawyers are investing in a suit with unstable ground. Because it's so wishy-washy there just isn't much money in it, and in consequence the payouts are limited. So I'm not sure there's a better way to do it. I do wish the lawyers were more upfront about the above in their messaging to class members (like, "we don't have enough definite evidence to get a conviction, but enough that it's risky for the company, so we can settle for a lower amount") as well as how much it will actually mean per individual, what consequences are likely for the company if the suit succeeds, etc. Not a lawyer (obviously) so if anyone has better info I'd be interested.
- mwint 4y agoMy guess is that very sentence would be used as evidence in court - “see, even they don’t think they have enough to win!” Leverage in court, so it’d be used to lessen payouts.
- ezfe 4y agoApple Keyboard Settlement is targeting $300+ for people who had multiple repairs (free repairs) on their keyboards.
- dole 4y agoIIRC, there’s three different tiers on this settlement, most fall within Tiers 1 ($50) and 2 ($150) and fewer will get the $250-300.
- ezfe 4y agoI had a 2016 MacBook Pro that was repaired 4 times over 4 years (all free repairs) so I should get the full settlement. In all cases, repairs were covered for the first 4 years so most of them should've been done for free, the settlement is purely for compensating time and effort.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y agoI got like $180 from Arco gas stations because they were charging 50 cents to pay at the pump with a debit card but weren't disclosing it. I literally bought Arco gas ONCE, and it was only a couple gallons to top off a U-Haul after a short move. I thought it was insane that the payout was so high.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoGood thing you can opt out of your data being collected by Equifax, right.. right? Seriously though, how did credit scores come about and was there any resistance at all at the time to peoples' financial information being collected en mass by private companies?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adrr 4y agoHow else would you do risk management for loans? Without credit bureau where would the loan originator determine the risk of the loan? Would each individual be responsible have to store all payments and receipt of payment and submit that? Or do we just blend the risk with everyone so if you always paid your loans on time, you pay the same rate as someone who has a loan write off and is 3 months behind in loan payments?
- kneebonian 4y ago> How else would you do risk management for loans? Without credit bureau where would the loan originator determine the risk of the loan? Would each individual be responsible have to store all payments and receipt of payment and submit that? You act like this is ridiculous but the fact of the matter is that I would prefer that, because ultimately the difference agency in this situation I provide the lender my information that I control, in any other scenario my agency has been taken away by an outside group, whom I may or may not trust. Hell imagine how different everything would be if instead of the Credit Unions working for the lenders I instead paid for a service myself that performed this service for me. The difference being one is done to me the other is done by me.
- mhb 4y agoAnd there's also a middle ground where you could subscribe to a credit agency and own the data which you could have them supply to a potential lender.
- tmaly 4y agohow much did the lawyers get?
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoPayPal finally has a purpose… receiving all these settlements. Plaid’s recent settlement was a decent $35 which is about what it costs to get a new drivers license ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- br-g 4y agoI also received my payout via PayPal but did not receive a notification so it sat in my account for several weeks. Was this intentional? I typically always receive notification when money hits my PP account...
- nerdwaller 4y agoI received an alert, so it may not be intentional that you didn't see anything (or an accident that I did). Paid for 1.25 months of GitHub since I don't tend to use PayPal for much else.
- br-g 4y agoInteresting - yeah I just happened to log in to my account and see it there, I basically only use PP for receiving settlement checks at this point :)
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoI didn’t get any notification for the plaid payout, probably an exclusive service for the courthouse clients to keep the payout out of the news cycle?
- jpster 4y agoMine was $22.50. Why the difference?
- justusthane 4y agoInteresting, mine was also exactly $5.21.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoDid you do the default payment or try to itemize?
- justusthane 4y agoDefault, I think.
- heavyset_go 4y agoI got about 3x what the OP got, but less than this. The payout schedule is probably published somewhere or at least as part of the settlement agreement.
- kevincrane 4y agoYou were allowed to bill for time you spent trying to repair Equifax’s damage. I spent 4-6 hours trying to verify all my various private banking details were still safe, so Equifax was happy to pay me for what they thought my time was worth (so I received like $19 instead of $5 lmao).
- xiwenc 4y agoWouldn’t it make more sense for these payouts to be consolidated and donated to a non-profit (humanitarian) org? Considering the overhead of processing all these “micro” payments. Assuming most people got few dollars payout. Or at least give people the option to opt out of the payout.
- txru 4y agoI like the idea of a Chief Liability (or Lamb…) Officer, a person who serves with the understanding that they’ll be the person who serves prison time for the felonious crimes of the corporation “I’d sign that purchase order, Bill, but our CLO is literally holding a gun to my head and sobbing saying it’s better this way”
- kneebonian 4y agoThey already actually have that it is called the CISO or Chief Intentional Sacrificial Officer, sometime misinterpreted as Chief Information Security Officer.
- autoexec 4y agoWho is the CISO at Equifax who is currently in prison for leaking our data?
- sli 4y agoWhy should all the other C-levels avoid jailtime for crimes committed by the corporation they're responsible for by just having a literal official patsy? That seems like such a blatant way to put C-levels above the law for real instead of the defacto way they seem to be right now.
- txru 4y ago(Hey, friend. I meant this as a lighthearted take. I have no power to write this into law) I don’t think at all anyone should do this cheaply haha. And imagine if the CLO told the board the other C-suite were squirreling secrets away. And individuals can always be indicted for fraud
- 3825 4y ago> Why should all the other C-levels avoid jailtime I don't care if the C-levels (other than the CEO and President of the board) go to prison. I want to see the CEO and ALL board members in prison for life with no possibility of parole.
- stevespang 4y ago[dead]
- ryandrake 4y agoThose solicitations I get in the mail to join class action suits always seem phishy to me, and I usually just throw them away. "There's a class action suit against a company you bought capacitors from 9 years ago! Give us your personal information and you may be entitled to a payout!" Uhh... no thanks, that's exactly what a scammer would say. How do people determine which ones are real, and what makes you decide to sign up?
- ChuckMcM 4y agoAgreed, they seem like phishes but the best I've received was ~$5K and least was $0.25.
- yojo 4y agoI search for the settlement and verify that there’s a real chain of news stories around it. Best to date was the Apple small developer settlement that paid out $8k. Previous was the Google/Apple non-compete settlement. I’ve never bothered with the consumer-focused ones. There are always so many class members you’re lucky to get a couple bucks - as in the OP’s case.
- kaashif 4y agoBut wouldn't a scammer try to use plausible, real class action lawsuits to scam people? Or would a scammer use obviously fake class action lawsuits in order to filter for the stupidest people possible? Depends on how many people fall for the scam I guess.
- yojo 4y agoI don’t click on the link in the email, I find the settlement site through Google. If the scammers can outrank they legit site, I am hosed though.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoFacebook had to pay me $300. Waiting on similar from Google. Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act has real teeth, and if you see a tech company claiming they want federal privacy legislation, it's very likely with the goal of weaker federal laws which preempt BIPA.
- zzz345345 4y agoI requested mine but never received it...
- artursapek 4y ago[flagged]
- ezfe 4y agoI got $7.05!
- imwillofficial 4y agoYou’re rich! Time to buy an island and retire in style
- verall 4y agoMine got sent to an ancient address, and as far as I can tell there's no way to update the address or have them resend it. Oh well...
- 082349872349872 4y agoJust curious: are these actual physical checks, on paper and everything?
- gurchik 4y agoAn email was sent in October asking if you would like a Paypal transfer or e-gift card instead of a check.
- petarb 4y agoGot mine today as well, $17
- user3939382 4y agoIf our government wasn’t a corrupt shit show they would have been shut down over what they did, or at least their ability to manage the general public’s data. $5 what an insult.
- AdamJacobMuller 4y agoHow did they calculate the value? I got one for $25 and some change
- kens 4y agoI got my $5.21 check too. For those who don't remember, the original settlement for the 2017 data breach was supposed to be $125. But they had "unexpected response" so the final settlement ended up being about 4% of that. It's kind of an insulting payment after Equifax leaked names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and some drivers license and credit card numbers. Info on the original settlement: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/you-can-go-claim-at-least-125-from-the-equifax-settlement-right-now/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/you-can-go-claim...
- MobileVet 4y agoYea, when I read that the claim group had ballooned I changed my ‘compensation’ to be 5 years of their crap service for identity theft monitoring. I figured that was worth more than $5… though it is debatable.
- sva_ 4y agoYou can probably buy those datasets for much less per row.
- schemescape 4y agoOf course, that's really 5 years of Experian trying to upsell you to their paid (out of pocket) services. Why can't I set it to email me only if there's a change? Why does it need to send me email every month?
- Fatnino 4y agoEquifax, not Experian
- schemescape 4y agoNo, they offered me Experian monitoring: > You filed a claim in the Equifax Data Breach Settlement and chose to receive free, three-bureau (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) credit monitoring from Experian for four years.
- latchkey 4y ago$40.44!
- anigbrowl 4y agoMeanwhile a share of Equifax stock is $198.31. It strikes me that data breaches might decrease in frequency if injured parties could choose whether to be compensated in cash or stock. If their negligence caused you to get pwned, you should get to pwn them in turn. Former Equifax CEO Richard Smith resigned rather than being fired, and got to leave with a $90 million severance package including $18 million of pension, although the breach is estimated to have cost the firm $700 million. He still sits on the board of Docusign.
- dehrmann 4y agoThis makes no sense. Paying in stock works by either issuing new shares and diluting existing shareholders or buying the shares to give out. Either way, it's a wash between getting stock and getting cash. If you want to see them impact, look at what shares prices do the day a breach is announced and the day it settles. The impact was priced-in long before, and shareholders already felt it.
- anigbrowl 4y agoIt's not a wash, because stock allows voting* and cash does not. You could also require that firms reserve a certain amount of stock as collateral against data breaches, with rules specified about its issuance, voting behavior, and distribution designed to maximize the negative impact upon existing shareholders and management. The owners and operators of a firm that extracts information as well as revenue from consumers but fails to secure such information should suffer the consequences of their negligence. * well, not all stock allows voting, some companies have different classes of stock to prevent plebs having leverage over corporate decision-making. Since I'm making up possible rules, I'd ban that too.
- nokya 4y agoMeanwhile, the stock price kept growing since. Which, once again, confirms what I commented multiple times here on HN: when you see a large company getting its personal databases breached then sued for hundreds of millions, buy its stock. It is very sadly the only way to get some form of reparation from the damage they have done in a justice system that still sees its "job creators" as gods on earth.
- tshaddox 4y agoI got an email that says I could collect my 5 bucks, but it and the website it links to look incredibly shady and despite seemingly confirming their legitimacy with a bit of googling there’s no way I’m giving them any information for 5 bucks.
- sys_64738 4y agoIs this taxable income?
- tentacleuno 4y agoWhen I got my credit report, I found that Equifax had recorded the previous selling price for my house. That... really makes me uncomfortable, and you have to ask the obvious: will lenders use the value of my house to decide if I'm credit-worthy?
- stcroixx 4y agoTransunion, Equifax, etc all have their own proprietary scoring algorithm which could already be using this data to compute your score. I used to work at one of these places - any bit of data they can use to enhance their score, they will try.
- chrisgoman 4y agoThey are most likely going to leak the list of people that requested the breach settlement checks :)
- dehrmann 4y agoI didn't get around to it, but with one of the class action suits over a breach, I wanted to object to the settlement because it mostly made the lawyers money, and, judging by how many breaches keep happening, doesn't provide enough incentive for companies to take security seriously. If more people objected to settlements, judges might pay more attention.
- er4hn 4y ago$5.21 should be enough to buy a new identity on the darkweb and rotate to it. For maximal security you should make sure to rotate your identity every 18 months.
- foobarbecue 4y agoThey denied my claim for no reason.
- cybersecurity99 4y ago[dead]
- trukledeitz 4y agoMine was a grand $3.52. A far sight less than the $125 that was reported a few years ago. I still wonder where that number went. As far as class action based on actual damage and aggregations thereof. I believe that may be a strategy, unfortunately most of those end up going to government entities. So the very people who will not legislate statute to protect you will be in the same organization as the Attorney's General that will sue the firms and receive the damages...
- Group_B 4y agoDang, I recently got a $500 check for HIPAA violation from a data breach.
- unixbotnuke 4y agoAnd no executives went to prison for the breach. We do not have justice in this country, but also realize this is not going to change.
- greggarious 4y agoAre you allowed to actually cash them or is it like a Knuth check that it’s rude?
- Armmarti34 4y ago[dead]
- Armmarti34 4y ago[dead]
- mock-possum 4y agointeresting, I got my $22.82 last month... why'd you have to wait longer to get less than me?