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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 SunTzuWarmaster on Friday August 02 2019, @08:54PM (2 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:58AM (1 child)
Oh, I completely understand and sympathize. If you think I don't understand your plight just because I wrote a clarifying message about the details of the lawsuit, please see my recent journal [soylentnews.org] about adventures with the credit bureaus. I've spent a lot more than nine hours of my time because of this mess.
(Sidenote: I really wish people would realize that just because someone wants to add a fact of clarification that may "count against" some outrage in another post, it doesn't necessarily mean that someone disagrees. It's a point of fact that I hoped some would find useful that people could actually get more out of this settlement. (And apologies if your post wasn't intended to make the assumption I was somehow defending terms of the lawsuit -- the repeated all caps seemed a little annoyed. I'm annoyed at the credit bureaus too.) End Sidenote.)
Did you not keep your receipts at least for the credit freeze? I froze my credit and it was free. (Though, as noted in the above link to my journal, it has come with further costs subsequently in terms of time and effort.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by SunTzuWarmaster on Saturday August 03 2019, @11:00AM