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Punitive damages.
There are no "punitive damages" in U.S. Small Claims Courts. Only "actual" (out of pocket) damages.
I guess treble damages are not called "punitive" but they're also not "actual".
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$15/month for identify protection/tracking X 12 X 40 years. You can't even dispute $15/month, since that's how much Equifax charges for their identity protection, so that must be how much it's worth since they caused these damages. That makes it more like $7200 in damages, not including the cost of money over time, inflation, etc.
I'm sure equifax would respond by offering you free credit monitoring for life (which costs them nothing to do)
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One thing I'm not sure about is how this breaks down as to people who paid Equifax or signed up for some service through them compared with people who involuntarily had their credit tracked through Equifax.
I was wondering about this too. Like, I never signed up for them, but apparently their site says I might have been affected. CreditKarma or other credit score companies apparently share user data to these agencies. Their announcement says social security, addresses and names have been stolen, this is really worse, this data is enough to do ton of things.
The credit agencies (of which equifax is one of 3) get their info from credit card companies and other financial institutions. If you've ever signed up for a credit card or gotten a mortgage or car loan the information from that transaction was sent to the credit reporting agencies. That's how they get data to make their determination of how credit worthy you are.
The super fucked up part is that it automatically signs you up for their "Credit protection" if you use their site to see if you were impacted. Doesn't ask if you'd like to, just says "Thanks for signing up, your year starts now!"
From my reading of ToS it also apparently waives your right to be a part of a class action lawsuit against Equifax...
I'd love to see the $70B number pan out (though $500 per person is less than the damages, I think) -- Equifax is a $17B company, and would presumably stop existing if that happened. On the other hand, these things always settle out of court, and Equifax certainly won't settle the suit for more than they're worth. I said it elsewhere, but I think the right response is to opt out of the class, and sue for $1000 in smal…
But then you would have to show $1000 of actual personal damage, which I doubt few if any can, unless you're thinking Equifax will just settle these one after another. But they're just as capable of multiplying out how many of these will have to happen before the losses devastate them like you just did and at some point will actually show up and make you prove your case.
I'd love to see the $70B number pan out (though $500 per person is less than the damages, I think) -- Equifax is a $17B company, and would presumably stop existing if that happened. On the other hand, these things always settle out of court, and Equifax certainly won't settle the suit for more than they're worth. I said it elsewhere, but I think the right response is to opt out of the class, and sue for $1000 in smal…
I saw your post about this in the other thread. If anyone wants to work together on this idea, my contact info is in my profile. If someone has a lawyer we can loop in (or is a lawyer), that would be ideal.
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I think it's unlikely you'll actually be damaged. Any real financial impact would have been reversed by your bank. Maybe a fee or two that two parties argue about who should reimburse your for it, however I can't see stuff like that adding up to $1,000 (or even $100).
Well about 2 months ago (when the leak was happening apparently) I had false information showing up on my credit report for a Comcast debt. The weird thing is the Comcast debt couldn't have actually been mine. As the date of the debt was smack dab in the middle of when I had service with Comcast before switching to ATT. Now, during this period I tried to refinance my home and was denied due to a low score with Equifa…
Whether the debt "could have been yours" isn't relevant, what's relevant is how it showed up there. If someone fraudulently signed up for a Comcast account using your social, and they obtained your social via the leak, then yes the leak damaged you. You could go after the difference in your refinanced interest rate now v. what it would have been had you gotten it at the first request (are you paying 0.1% more because rates went up a week after your denial?) and possible the additional interest paid between the denial and the successful refinancing.
But if the Comcast account showed up on your report because someone fat fingered a social and there was no fraud, the leak didn't damage you at all and it was just bad luck.
I'd appreciate advice from someone in the know about credit monitoring/repair services. There are so many and little credible information available about their capabilities and performance. If you have experience with this who do you recommend? I've been caught up in the DOD breech, this Equifax incident and a couple smaller ones. I'm not interested in pinching pennies here; I want good results.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0497-credit-freeze-faq...
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This class action will likely be settled in the same way the Ticketmaster case was settled ... with a coupon book good for 2 free credit reports.
Probably for good reason. $500 per class member is an insanely high damages estimate. 99.9% of people will suffer zero damages because their identities will not be stolen. Even the ones who do have their identities stolen will likely be made whole by the credit card companies. The real damages here are going to be to the banks and credit card companies that will have to absorb the costs of all the fraud. As to the Ti…
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Probably for good reason. $500 per class member is an insanely high damages estimate. 99.9% of people will suffer zero damages because their identities will not be stolen. Even the ones who do have their identities stolen will likely be made whole by the credit card companies. The real damages here are going to be to the banks and credit card companies that will have to absorb the costs of all the fraud. As to the Ti…
"Even the ones who do have their identities stolen will likely be made whole by the credit card companies." Fraudulent charges on a credit card are the least of my concerns. This opens us up to a lifetime of identity theft and insecure accounts of every sort. I'm not even sure how they can approach remedying the problem. Coordinate with the SSA to get 150 million people new SSNs at the least.
There is mo way to even estimate the damage as some devious ways of it harming us may not even exist yet.