tmiw

By Discover, or other issuers? I'm not sure I understand your point about leverage.

FWIW, I've opened up at least a few cards since signing up for that service and haven't seen any AA from them.

GrayAnderson

IANAL but I'm wondering whether a class objection to the settlement might not be in the offing. If nothing else, presuming that of over 100m affected less than 1m would take up the $125 (especially given the other aspects of the settlement such as increased free credit reports for the next 6-7 years probably partially obviating the benefits of the credit monitoring) seems to be an exercise in innumeracy worthy of the folks over at Hoover, and I can't help but wonder if some other lawyers might find some way to accuse the plaintiffs' lawyers of malpractice (given the implied assumptions on uptake on the cash). The fees off of a successful objection here might well make it worth the risk.

Of course, per the USA Today it also appears that you can claim $25/hour for up to ten hours spent on dealing with consequences of the breach with no documentation, plus fees to accountants, etc., so I sense that there's a real risk of some racketeering opening up on the sidelines here. And if I had to guess from the fallout from the Deepwater Horizon spill case, a decent chunk of it will be successful. It wouldn't be hard to see a sleazy lawyer/accountant round up a bunch of clients to run an overcharge-and-reimburse scam on (e.g. charge them for five hours each at $200/hour or bill them for a retainer and then throw part of the money back at them).

NB: The $125 only applies to "blanket" cash settlements, not reimbursements for actual expenses. That's where everything got fouled up.

tmiw

I got an email from the settlement administrator offering me a chance to change my mind with regards to the cash payment. I was going to just tell them that I'm using CreditKarma and still take the money (even if it's far less than $125) but since it looks like that doesn't do all three bureaus, I'm considering opting for the monitoring instead. Anyone else doing that too?

cjw2001

I went for the money. Even if it is ends up being 10 cents its better than worthless credit monitoring that is readily available from other sources.

tmiw

Turns out that if every one of the 147 million people affected went for credit monitoring, it'd be worth a maximum of $2.59 per person. As long as the cash payout is more that that, one would likely be better off doing that instead of the credit monitoring.

Anyway, I decided to stick with the cash payout. Besides, the settlement didn't specifically say that whatever service you're using has to cover all three bureaus.

spamman808

I'm sticking with the cash myself.

MASTERNC

I requested the free credit monitoring and time for adding & thawing credit freezes since the breach. However, only two weeks after submitting, someone accessed a store credit card of mine using account lookup (likely with a Social Security number) and made several large purchases within a 10 minute period. Had to ask the administrator if I could amend my claim for additional time related to calling the bank, filing law enforcement reports, and requesting extended fraud alerts.

Robl

"According to the filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, Equifax was protecting sensitive personal information on a portal used to manage credit disputes with the username “admin.”

And if that wasn’t enough, the password protecting that data was probably the first one an attacker would guess: Yes that’s right, it was also “admin,” according to the lawsuit."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateofl.../#51ffb3543d38

tmiw

More proof that the settlement offer is nowhere near as punishing as they deserve.

EmailKid

According to many news sources (hence no links, as it's one of top stories on pretty much all news websites as well as national news), it seems that four Chinese nationals were indicted today for the breach.

Perhaps they are sitting on the info and why people were not as badly effected as some of us feared.

As side note, I'm surprised no one posted this before me.

wco81

Culpability still likes mostly with the companies which failed to protect their customers' data.

Even if you accept that only the perpetrators should be blamed, it's not like we're going to be able to bring these people to justice.

EmailKid

No argument from me.

No, we're not going to bring the Chinese perpetrators to justice. And no, I don't accept that only they should be blamed. Someone else could have stolen the info and sold it to some nefarious characters.

tmiw

As mentioned previously, it's more of a failing with how identity works in the US than anything else, though that still doesn't excuse Equifax's poor handling of their security.

wco81

Yeah agreed on all counts.

Its a reflection on the state of things. Americans have gotten used to hearing about hacks and pretty much take it for granted that their info. is out there.


I don't think it's a big enough of an outrage or else it might be a campaign issue and some politicians may promise to address it.

There are various proposals but politicians don't feel pressure to act.

tmiw

I mean, the info's been floating around for a while even before the Equifax breach. I'm not sure the breach itself really added much to that.

Anyway, IIRC it's free to freeze your credit reports now (regardless of state), so that's something. IMO it's nowhere near enough but I doubt we'll see much additional movement at the political level any time soon.