If you fill in this form,
Equifax will send you $125 as part of its settlement with the Consumer
Finance Protection Bureau, the FTC, and 48 out of 50 states.
Equifax doxed the nation and profited handsomely from it. $125 is a
laughably small sum given how much damage the data they hemorrhaged all
over the internet could cause you. Equifax should have faced the
corporate death penalty, the execs who oversaw the disaster should have
had their assets seized and diverted to anti-identity-theft measures and
charities.
Instead, the FTC et al are hitting the company for a maximum of $700m (how much they pay depends in part on whether you fill in this form. Equifax’s market cap stands today at $16.6B, and it posted $3.412B in earnings in 2018, up 1.48% increase from 2017.
As meaningless as the $125 is, as piddling as the $700m is, you should still do this. As Josephine Wolff writes for Slate, breaches should be as expensive as possible.
Anything you can do to make them more expensive will help people inside
companies who are arguing against data-collection and retention, making
the world safer for everyone else. Anything you can do to make breaches
more expensive will hit the share price of companies that overcollect
our data.
To be clear, it’s not guaranteed you get the $125.
I went to file my claim because their eligibility checker confirmed my information was compromised, but you can only claim the $125 if you already have credit monitoring that you have to certify will extend at least 6mos past the date you file your claim.
Otherwise, you’re only eligible for free credit monitoring and credit reports for somewhere between 3-9yrs.
This is not a free $125 for everyone and I do not see enough people enumerating those conditions. Free credit reporting is cool or whatever but it’s not money.
You can check to see if your data was impacted before you file as well.
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