"Almost half the settlement — $300 million — will go toward American consumers who were harmed by the breach, according to settlement documents filed in federal court in Atlanta. The company also agreed to pay $275 million in fines to end investigations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico."
> The company also agreed to pay $275 million in fines to end investigations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Equifax's mess-up did damage to American citizens by exposing their information. Why isn't most, if not all, of the money going to them? "Fines to end investigations" just sounds like a bribe -- the government itself wasn't affected by this, and yet they are being paid as much as the people who were affected -- more so considering only the 31 million pot.
The money is going to them, in the sense that a) the money will be used to strengthen protections against such a thing happening again, and catching others who do it and b) that's that much less money that CFPB has to get appropriated by Congress, so that much more taxpayer money available for other programs.
Someone took their data, and then was never seen or heard from again.
Its more like someone I dont know got a picture of me naked through my house window and now has that copy of a photo locked in their secret house that nobody knows about. Violated, yet. Exposed, eh. Literally nobody else besides the photographer ever saw me.
When you filled out the claim it also asked things like how many hours have you spent disputing fraud etc and requesting documentation for over so many hours with additional compensation for each hour you spent trying to fix identity theft.
You'd include copies of dispute letters, police reports, receipts for monitoring services, legal expenses etc.
And im asking what legal expenses and police reports there would be since the Equifax data has never been publicly seen?
As far as we know, it has never been used in any way to assume anyone's identity or to steal any money.
Im kind of shocked at the HN community ignoring that the fact that the attack never lead to any public data leak.
Any time you spent disputing fraud or fixing identity theft, if submitted as part of this settlement, would be a lie, because you spent that time addressing data lost by someone else, not Equifax.
Because it caused a panic for many people during the initial breach when you went to the website about the breach to check to see if your information was involved. Many people opted for monitoring during that time or spent effort getting freezes, etc.
I agree, that reimbursing people for buying credit reporting they didnt need is the right thing to do. But thats it. Theres no other damage besides superfluous money spent and time wasted. These other categories of money (Besides time/credit reporting reimbursement) set aside, dont make any sense, because NOBODY has ANY evidence of damage, any any evidence people think they have, isnt related to Equifax.
"Almost half the settlement — $300 million — will go toward American consumers who were harmed by the breach, according to settlement documents filed in federal court in Atlanta. The company also agreed to pay $275 million in fines to end investigations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/business/equifax-settleme...
According to Equifax's FAQ:
"the total amount available for these alternative payments is $31 million"
So I'm wondering the same thing: what happened to the rest of the amount set aside for the victims, about $270 million?
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EDIT: Interesting note in the article linked above:
If all 147 million victims of the breach were to take part, the monitoring services would cost Equifax more than $2 billion.
“If people want Equifax to pay more, sign up for credit monitoring,” said Norman E. Siegel, a lawyer representing consumers in the settlement.