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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 JoeMerchant on Friday August 02 2019, @08:10PM (3 children)
Too big to fail is actually a thing...
Whatever moron came up with $125 per claimant needs to be disbarred.
Also telling: $31M for the claimants but the total settlement is over 22x that large, meaning that the lawyers decided that the 147 million affected parties are only due 4.4% of the settlement - guess who gets the rest?
As long as we let lawyers write our laws, the Ouroboros will continue to eat itself, and us along with it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 03 2019, @02:27AM (2 children)
As I noted in a comment above (and was noted by another commenter in this thread), there is apparently another pot of money over four times as large as the $31 million that can go to people who actually incurred expenses related to the breach (including fees for credit freezes, credit monitoring, costs in losses due to identity theft/fraud, etc.). The $31 million is simply a pot for claims for "time" that consumers wasted dealing with this situation, which I gather doesn't require things like receipts or whatever for actual expenses. It's still not enough of an overall piece of the settlement money compared to the legal fees, etc., but it is significantly more than 4.4%.
Or, to be more clear: if you didn't incur financial lose due to this breach, you apparently might get $1 or less or something. If you did incur financial loss, you can file claims and should get that reimbursed (capped at $20,000/person in the class action).
To be honest, I'm rather frustrated at some of the news coverage of this stuff recently, as it may be dissuading people who actually incurred expenses from filing for relief they may be due. For people with no documented expenses, however, they will basically be out of luck unless they want to take their own case to court against Equifax.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 03 2019, @03:39AM (1 child)
4.4% * 5 is still too small for "people" vs lawyers, unless you're a lawyer.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @04:55PM
That said I'm not even sure why someone's reimbursement for losses should be capped by this class action. Unless it's some easier payment scheme where you don't have to spend as much time in court etc to claim your "up to $20,000".