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Sorry, you're not getting $125 from the Equifax settlement, FTC says
Remember that $125 you could have gotten from the Equifax Inc. data-breach settlement? Yeah, never mind.
The Federal Trade Commission announced Wednesday that, due to an overwhelming response, cash payments aren't going to be anywhere near $125 each, and urged consumers to sign up for the free credit monitoring offered as an alternative.
About 147 million people were affected by the 2017 Equifax EFX, -0.64% breach, but only $31 million was set aside for payments as part of the $700 million settlement, announced last week. A quick bit of math shows that for everyone to have gotten $125 from that pot, there would have to be only 248,000 claimants. While the FTC didn't give a number, they said there were already "an enormous number of claims filed."
"A large number of claims for cash instead of credit monitoring means only one thing: each person who takes the money option will wind up only getting a small amount of money," the FTC said in a blog post Wednesday.
"So, if you haven't submitted your claim yet, think about opting for the free credit monitoring instead," the FTC said. "Frankly, the free credit monitoring is worth a lot more."
[...] The agency noted that consumers who had to pay out-of-pocket expenses due to the breach are still entitled to reimbursement if they submit a claim, as that money comes from a separate fund.
To get more information, or to find out if your data was exposed in the breach or file a claim, go to ftc.gov/Equifax.
Another quick bit of math reveals that if every one of the 147 million people affected opted for the $125 payout, the settlement pool would have needed to contain $18.375 billion; the payout fund totaled 0.17% of that: $31 million. Putting it another way, they set aside $0.21 for each potential claimant.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday August 02 2019, @07:32PM (1 child)
Class action lawsuits never force people to join the class. There is always, by both law and long-standing precendent, an opt-out period after settlement, where you can choose to sue separately, even if you're one of the original litigants of the class action case.
Failure-to-inform should be(and I think is) a crime.
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:51AM
They do force. Similar to privacy settings we are familiar with, it has to be opt-in period and anybody who did nothing still have a right to do anything as if the settlement never happened.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.