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Visiting Equifax's site to see if you're a victim of the recent data breach can require you to waive lawsuit rights:
By all accounts, the Equifax data breach is, as we reported Thursday, "very possibly the worst leak of personal info ever." The incident affects possibly as many as 143 million people.
But if you want to find out if your data might have been exposed, you waive your right to sue the Atlanta-based company. We're not making this up. The company has now published a website allowing consumers to input their last six digits of their Social Security numbers to find out.
Like most websites, at the bottom of this new site is a section called "Terms of Use." There, in paragraph 4, is bolded, uppercase text of note. It tells site visitors that you agree to waive your right to sue and instead must "resolve all disputes by binding, individual arbitration."
AGREEMENT TO RESOLVE ALL DISPUTES BY BINDING INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION. PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE SECTION CAREFULLY BECAUSE IT AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS BY REQUIRING ARBITRATION OF DISPUTES (EXCEPT AS SET FORTH BELOW) AND A WAIVER OF THE ABILITY TO BRING OR PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION, CLASS ARBITRATION, OR OTHER REPRESENTATIVE ACTION. ARBITRATION PROVIDES A QUICK AND COST EFFECTIVE MECHANISM FOR RESOLVING DISPUTES, BUT YOU SHOULD BE AWARE THAT IT ALSO LIMITS YOUR RIGHTS TO DISCOVERY AND APPEAL.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @07:14PM (6 children)
Equifax's market cap is $17.5 billion dollars. If the company were completely liquidated to pay damages to all inured parties (143 million of them), then every plaintiff would receive about $100. But that doesn't include all of the legal fees, the effect of such a suit on Equifax's stock price, etc. It's not like Equifax is worth $17.5B because it has that much cash sitting in a vault somewhere.
The victims are basically screwed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @07:25PM
Include every financial institution (Visa, MC, AMEX, banks) that used their services to access your account without your permission and there's plenty of cash.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday September 09 2017, @08:56PM (2 children)
I suspect the long term effect of half the country being doxxed is their data will no longer be considered private identification.
You have to admit, its kinda stupid in 2017 for anyone on the planet to be able to take out a loan in your name with no more than a fake ID (which all college kids have) yer ma's maiden name (hello social media) and literally 9 digits (which are essentially public for most people from zillions of past breaches and now this one)
I would guess that after the financial system resets from the above, the main problem is going to be targeted social engineering attacks. We've gotten pretty used to phone calls asking for your credit card number from "your credit card company" etc, and now you're going to get targeted attacks with phone calls asking for your CC number claiming to be from Citibank or wtf.
The first 10K people to have their identity info made public are screwed. The first 140M, eh, not so much.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Saturday September 09 2017, @10:03PM (1 child)
You have to admit, its kinda stupid in 2017 for anyone on the planet even permits the credit rating agencies to exist.
Surely the whole purpose of data protection laws is to prevent the existence of scumbags like this.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday September 10 2017, @07:28PM
You end up with an interesting slippery slope, where "title clearing services" are kinda like CRAs for pieces of real estate "How bogus is this certificate of title for the brooklyn bridge?" vs "How bogus is this claim of $200K/yr income on this NINJA subprime mortgage application?" Another interesting slippery slope is the dying and failing SSL certificate racket.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday September 10 2017, @03:42PM (1 child)
Agreed. But the outcome we want is a judgment of $1000+ in favor of each victim. As your math shows, that would utterly wipe Equifux off the map, together with each and every employee, and the entire investment of every stockholder.
That is what it will take to fix the hurricane of computer insecurity amid which we are all forced to live. The CxO level would realize that just perhaps their own interests are at stake, not just the ants they consider the rest of us to be. Every employee of other data-handling enterprises would see that maybe those "stupid security rules" are there to protect their own income stream. Investors would start looking for security audits by independent third parties.
In short, the nuclear option for Equifux is about the only good that could come of this event.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @05:55PM
Don't worry. It won't happen.
I'll be surprised to even see a headline about even tens of millions of damages. Their PR department, the media, knows they can throw huge-sounding numbers like "millions" up there, and the innumerate cows will believe that justice was done.