The really bonkers part about the Equifax settlement is they're being permitted to "pay" the fine by giving away their own credit monitoring solution. They value at it as something like $15/month, but it likely costs them pennies to run. A good portion of those users will probably convert to paid users at the end of things - I strongly suspect they'll wind up profiting overall.
They should've been forced to cover another company's credit monitoring solution, preferably a direct competitor's.
