The Consumer Restitution Fund will be used to: Make cash payments for Out-of-Pocket. Regardless, I’m off to pump a few “free” gallons of gas. Two years after its historic data breach, the credit bureau Equifax agreed Monday to pay at least 575 million, and up to 700 million, to settle enforcement actions with 50 US states and. Equifax will pay at least 380,500,000 into a Consumer Restitution Fund. If these consequences neither deter future cyber-negligence nor compensate victims for harms experienced, what, then, are they for? Unfortunately, some argue they are ‘mostly exercises in public relations,’ remediating the reputation of both regulators and companies alike.” 90 Degree Benefits, a health insurance company, is in hot water as a proposed class-action lawsuit emerges, following a data breach that jeopardized the privacy. Settlements like the Equifax one “neither affect the business practices of these global giants, nor do they provide adequate remedies for the victims harmed. “Even when companies are unquestionably at legal fault, the victims of data malfeasance are frequently unable to receive adequate compensation, if anything at all,” writes Indiana University law professor Joao Marinotti in an NYU Law Review article. Uber is paying 148 million to settle claims over the ride-hailing companys cover-up of a data breach in 2016, when hackers stole personal information of some 25 million customers and drivers. While I’m happy to have a few more dollars in my bank account, I’d be even happier if Equifax had been truly held accountable for its egregious data breach. Even if the average payment were $15, that would mean close to 10 million Americans filed a claim, or 6.7%. If your personal information was exposed in the 2017 Equifax data breach, you could get money from a 380.5 million Equifax class action lawsuit settlement. If it were $5.20, that would mean 28 million Americans filed a claim, or close to 20% of eligible individuals. It is hard to know the average payment made by Equifax, but it appears to be quite low. Of that fund, only 31 million was set aside for cash. I questioned this forecast in 2019: “was it reasonable to assume that only 248,000 would want to at least get some money back after Equifax’s egregious handling of their data? Was it reasonable to assume that there wouldn’t be more anger and a desire to make Equifax pay for its security lapses?” Equifax is paying out 700 million in the wake of its 2017 data breach, of which only 380 million is earmarked for consumer compensation. That translates to a forecasted claim rate of 0.17%. With a purported settlement payment of $125 and a fixed pot of $31 million, Schoshinski appears to have calculated that only 248,000 Americans would file a claim and ask for the cash payment. Equifax has promised a payout of up to 20,000 for customers affected by the massive breach that took place in 2017, which exposed information including 147 million people’s social security.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |