Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims • Hacker News Board

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#431

Post by pas » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

frereubu wrote: post #308

tarsinge wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France we don’t have credit scores and credit monitoring companies, but everytime you take a loan you are asked for a ton of proof of solvability, and basically give your full bank statements to the credit lender so that they can check your incomes vs spendings (and see what you spend on btw). Don’t know what’s worse.

This is a great 99% Invisible episode about how credit cards came about, and what it was like beforehand, where you would be interviewed at length by a store before being given credit to buy, for example, a piece of furniture. Credit cards were designed to outsource checking of credit-worthiness, stop intrusive interviews with stores and avoid embarrassment of being rejected in-store. Lax digital storage of informati…

Why was that interview so lengthy? Usually, in Europe, if you can show a bank statement for the last ~3 months that shows you get regular payments from a company, and/or a statement from your employer that you're a regular employee (not just started, not already halfway out of the door) then you're good to go.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#432

Post by basch » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

officeplant wrote: post #393

basch wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And im asking what legal expenses and police reports there would be since the Equifax data has never been publicly seen? As far as we know, it has never been used in any way to assume anyone's identity or to steal any money. Im kind of shocked at the HN community ignoring that the fact that the attack never lead to any public data leak. Any time you spent disputing fraud or fixing identity theft, if submitted as part…

Because it caused a panic for many people during the initial breach when you went to the website about the breach to check to see if your information was involved. Many people opted for monitoring during that time or spent effort getting freezes, etc.

thats not a legal expense or damage.

I agree, that reimbursing people for buying credit reporting they didnt need is the right thing to do. But thats it. Theres no other damage besides superfluous money spent and time wasted. These other categories of money (Besides time/credit reporting reimbursement) set aside, dont make any sense, because NOBODY has ANY evidence of damage, any any evidence people think they have, isnt related to Equifax.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#433

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #423

sokoloff wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Existing land owners, home builders, and mortgage lenders are most certainly not better off if people only buy houses with cash. I also think that whatever the lowest rung on the economic ladder who could plausibly buy property may also be made less well off by shutting them out of the housing ownership market entirely.

> Existing land owners, home builders, and mortgage lenders are most certainly not better off if people only buy houses with cash. The existing land owners are probably the biggest real opposition now, though they wouldn't be any worse off if we had done the right thing to begin with, because then they'd have paid less from the start too. It could be worth a one-time cost of paying them off in some way. It's debatabl…

People who are buying houses with 3% down payments are unlikely to be able to buy a house for cash for 3% of current prices. That's the sense in which they may be shut out of home ownership.

One of the most consistent and reliable means to lift oneself from the low end of middle class to squarely middle class has been the leveraged purchasing of property in a city that continues to grow. Taking a 3% or 5% downpayment and having housing appreciate at inflation or slightly higher than inflation is a tremendous wealth creator when that equity is created with leverage.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#434

Post by munk-a » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

g051051 wrote: post #346

hinkley wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, in a word, extortion.

Saying "I'm not going to loan you money if I can't be sure you'll pay it back" is not extortion.

I'd prefer if we, as a society, could just establish better and more reliable legal consequences for delinquency - potentially with a system for a pooled assurance fund to pay out on bad debts that can't be collected while punishing those who took on such risks in bad faith.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#435

Post by craftinator » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #243

amluto wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sharing of credit worthiness information is the cornerstone of your ability to get credit. It's not a hidden extra, it's not something you can choose not to get, there's no "opt out". It's a condition of doing business with the credit grantor. No, this is only true because the law does not meaningfully restrict abusive contracts. Sure, a credit card issuer should [0] be able to ask some agency for information o…

At the individual level nothing stops me from maintaining a list of people I think are trustworthy or noting prior acts for evidence of such. There’s no opt-in required because you’re not the one providing anything. The customer of the credit agency, the company extending you credit, is opting in to share what they know about you.

> At the individual level nothing stops me from maintaining a list of people I think are trustworthy or noting prior acts for evidence of such.

> There’s no opt-in required because you’re not the one providing anything. The customer of the credit agency, the company extending you credit, is opting in to share what they know about you.

Until you get too large, powerful, and rich, then the government regulates you. This is the purpose of regulation, to control the abusive use of power.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#436

Post by craftinator » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

basch wrote: post #279

eblanshey wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The company also agreed to pay $275 million in fines to end investigations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Equifax's mess-up did damage to American citizens by exposing their information. Why isn't most, if not all, of the money going to them? "Fines to end investigations" just sounds like a bribe -- the governme…

Wouldn't the information have to surface first to call it exposed?

No. You're exposed when you walk through your town naked, not when you see pictures of it later on in the day.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#437

Post by basch » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 8:19 PM UTC

craftinator wrote: post #436

basch wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the information have to surface first to call it exposed?

No. You're exposed when you walk through your town naked, not when you see pictures of it later on in the day.

Someone took their data, and then was never seen or heard from again.

Its more like someone I dont know got a picture of me naked through my house window and now has that copy of a photo locked in their secret house that nobody knows about. Violated, yet. Exposed, eh. Literally nobody else besides the photographer ever saw me.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#438

Post by tbyehl » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

g051051 wrote: post #343

tbyehl wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would 'some agency' have anything to say about your credit risk if issuers of credit weren't feeding them information about your credit performance? What's more bothersome to me is that these companies are scooping up every bit of information they can about me and selling it to anyone. Did I consent to TheWorkNumber? I definitely did not with the first few employers / payroll processors who have sold out my payro…

> my birthday, most of addresses I've had since the mid-90s, every family member I've shared an address with since 1999, information on two vehicles I presently own and one former, Your existence in the world isn't a secret. Every scrap of that is public information. You have a postal address to get mail, you register your car with your state to pay taxes on it, etc.

Well, your point overlooks the points I was aiming for.

1. Any of those scraps of data have negligible value by themselves, but when they're aggregated and traded their value is vastly increased.

2. I don't have any choice in how those scraps of data were originally gathered and shared. Should I not to have an address? Pay my taxes? Register my vehicles?

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#439

Post by g051051 » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 11:22 PM UTC

tbyehl wrote: post #438

g051051 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my birthday, most of addresses I've had since the mid-90s, every family member I've shared an address with since 1999, information on two vehicles I presently own and one former, Your existence in the world isn't a secret. Every scrap of that is public information. You have a postal address to get mail, you register your car with your state to pay taxes on it, etc.

Well, your point overlooks the points I was aiming for. 1. Any of those scraps of data have negligible value by themselves, but when they're aggregated and traded their value is vastly increased. 2. I don't have any choice in how those scraps of data were originally gathered and shared. Should I not to have an address? Pay my taxes? Register my vehicles?

1. Yes, that's true. The value increases, in that the more data that's available, the better the decisions that can be made.

2. So? Why should you have a choice in it? Those things are classified as public records, available to anyone.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#440

Post by buttcoinslol » Thu, Aug 01, 2019, 11:32 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #404

buttcoinslol wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can eliminate credit score swings by never generating a credit card statement with a balance. You can do this by paying your card off prior to the statement date. I spend between $1000-$2000 on credit cards a month and collectively I generate statements with less than $10 spread across 4 cards. My credit score is rock solid from month to month. If you have six figures of liquid assets (what 0.1% debt vs liquid as…

We usually just set all our cards on autopay-in-full and forget about it. Is there a way to have them autopay before the statement date, or do you need to proactively check every month and make a payment right before the statement date?

Being proactive is the only way, unfortunately.