nGeekly Update - 07 August 2019

As to the Equifax Settlement, several things - First as to the $125 Cash Payment, yes that is illusory, yes it is limited to a total of $31 Million Dollars and yes that means people if they elect the cash option will receive far less than $125. So the 10 Year Free Credit Monitoring is probably the better deal for that section of the Settlement.

One further note in this regard, if you are concerned you are going to receive 10 Years Credit Monitoring from Equifax (the very party that caused or allowed the Data Breach, this is not the case at least not entirely. The first 4 years of Credit Monitoring is a 3 Bureau Monitoring Service from an Equifax Competitor, only after that expires do you have 6 additional years of Single Bureau Monitoring from Equifax. Also note, the Breach was of Equifax's Credit Bureau Information Database not its Credit Monitoring Services, which s why it impacts so many people.

But on to the Settlement. The Settlement is composed of 3 parts, the first is the either/or $125 Maximum (if 248,000 or fewer claim it) or 10 Year Credit Monitoring. The 2nd Component is compensation for up to 20 Hours of your time at $25 Per Hour for Credit Exposure or Risk Assessment and Actions you take to minimize or mitigate those risks. Under this section a Claimant can claim up to ten (10) Hours at $25 an hour without any documentation other than your sworn statement saying how many hours you spent and what you were doing to mitigate the damage.

For example, if you spent 3 Hours Searching the Web for your exposed date, another 2 Hours trying to find a suitable and reliable Service to monitor or protect your credit and 5 Hours changing passwords and security questions on the many websites that you log into regularly or irregularly to mitigate your exposure, you would have 10 Hours at $25 an Hour or $250 Cash coming to you just by stating on the Settlement Website's online form without requiring any further documentation. If you actually can show you opened or closed accounts, purchased or reviewed Credit Monitoring Services, etc. for another 10 Hours you can document you can receive another $250 for a total of $500.

In addition to that you can claim up to $20,000 for actual damages or actual out of pocket expenditures caused by either the Breach or your attempts to mitigate damage from the Breach. This would include for example: Any Fees for Credit Monitoring Services you paid since the Breach, Say $20 a Month for LifeLock for example and $150 for Credit Service Monitoring from an Equifax competitor or Equifax itself. It would also include any costs incurred due to accounts being exposed, credit being taken out wrongfully in your name and cost associated with correcting the same. Up to $20,000 total.

Both of the latter sums are not subject to the $31 Million Dollar Cap on level one claims and are additions to not in lieu of level one claims. You can make claims on all three levels and the latter two levels are capped only by the overall Settlement Amount of $700 Million dollars plus.

I believe almost anyone that change any passwords can at a minimum legitimately claim the 10 Hours at $25 an Hour or $250 plus the 10 Years Free Credit Monitoring and it takes minimal effort to claim both. I would add that most Husbands and Wives can make individual claims each so most couples could rightfully receive $250 Each plus 10 Years Credit Monitoring Each. If you took steps or incurred costs and you can document that your can claim up to $250 More (10 more Hours Documented) Plus any actual out of pocket costs.

So the settlement as a whole is not illusory at all, in my opinion and unlike many such settlements is not limited to useless coupons or discounts but rather pays actual real cash or actual real services or both.

I mentioned the last regarding discounts and coupons because my personal experience has been that many Class Action Law Suit Settlement Agreements provide huge fees for the lawyers involved, inflated by totally illusory "huge dollar assigned value" often in the hundreds of millions of dollars "stated value" that are actually merely coupons or supposed discounts you receive only if you buy directly from the offending company and the stated discounts are off list prices so that often the "savings" don't even get you down to the regular price you can find everyday for the same product.

But the Lawyers Fees are based on the "Hundreds of Millions of Dollars" of benefits to consumers (that are actually totally non-existentso they receive actual cash of Millions, Tens of Millions or sometimes Hundreds of Millions of Dollars and are the only ones who actually receive anything of value. The Offending Company meanwhile effectively only ends up paying the Class Action's Counsel and to the extent they honor coupons of discounts gets direct sales at more than their normal wholesale price. Now that is a scam.

I suggest, Bob, that you implement a maximum-length for comments as well as a possible limit of how many times a person can submit a comment within one particular session.

Its called an RV, Bob. All we need is the self-driving feature and we're home. (Have to empty the sewage tank every so often.)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ha, that's quite right!

"exposed sensitive data of 147 Americans." Only 147 Americans? Boy are they gonna get a lot of that $31 million!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Oops, should have been 147 MILLION. :-)