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Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

nytimes.com

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Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#121

Post by harryh »

aloknnikhil wrote: post #118
harryh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of the settlement is designated for people who experience actual harm (identity theft of some kind basically) from the breach. It's perfectly reasonable that people who's lives haven't been negatively impacted in any real way don't receive anything more than a token payment.

The alternative compensations was set at $31 million. And the cash compensations per person caps out at $20,000. If we start with this cap, the settlement was supposed to benefit only 1,550 individuals out of the 148 million records that were breached. Even if you assume just $125 per person, that number only benefits 248,000. So the number of people benefiting from this range between 1,550 and 248,000, if the origin…

The 31 million is for the people that haven't experienced any identity theft. This is the money being split up by all the people making $125 claims.

The total pool to pay out claims to consumer is 425 million. Subtracting the 31M that leaves 394 million for people who experience real harm. The $20,000 cap per person is for people drawing money from this pool.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#123

Post by gummydog »

exabrial wrote: post #76

Everyone needs to realize that the whole "fine" was just an inside deal. Who do you think provides credit monitoring services? That's right, credit bureaus. That's why the they're pushing everyone to take the "free credit monitoring", so they recover the loss from the fine. If they were to pay all 140 million people $125, the sum would be $17b or so, which is an appropriate fine.

There has been a bit of pain aside from the flimsy monetary damages. To date Equifax had to manage numerous lawsuits from municipal, state and federal jurisdictions. They were investigated by FTC, SEC, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, UK Financial Conduct Authority, UK Information Commissioner’s Office (privacy regulator) and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Equifax had to attend congressional hearings conducted by the House Financial Services Committee, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Digital Commerce & Consumer Protection and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Communications. The outcome aside from monetary penalties also should factor substantial reputation damages, costs of increased regulation at both the state and federal levels, CEO Richard Smith retirement, issuance of a public apology and the IRS suspended its contract with Equifax. Further lawsuits, hearings and regulation will continue to tax Equifax.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#124

Post by hiram112 »

amalcon wrote: post #115
exabrial wrote: post #76

Everyone needs to realize that the whole "fine" was just an inside deal. Who do you think provides credit monitoring services? That's right, credit bureaus. That's why the they're pushing everyone to take the "free credit monitoring", so they recover the loss from the fine. If they were to pay all 140 million people $125, the sum would be $17b or so, which is an appropriate fine.

It's doubly painful, because the "free credit monitoring" on offer is provided by Equifax -- the exact company whose competence we don't trust anymore. The compensation for being affected by Equifax's security failure is a gratis security offering from that same company. For crying out loud, they could have at least paid Experian or TransUnion to do the monitoring: while they are just as shady, we don't have immediat…

There is actually a response from the FTC about concerns relating to the credit service being offered by Equifax themselves.

Therefore the agreement stipulates that the first four years of monitoring is provided by Experian, the final 6 years, though, is still Equifax.

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/cases-proceedings/refunds/eq...

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#125

Post by belenos46 »

pas wrote: post #55
notyourday wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Primary lenders ( the ones that actually lend their own money and at the end have the best rates -- arrived at adding the total expected cost of the APR plus add junk fees ) do not use non-automated underwriting for conforming loans. They win over the lenders that do not use automatic underwriting by tens of thousands of dollars.

Could someone explain what non-automated underwriting means? And what does confirming mean in this sense? I get that they win compared to those who use more labor, but still some details would be nice :)

Automated underwriting is a computer program that takes your vital statistics as input (age, income, probably some illegal things like race and physical location of the house you're trying to buy [in RE lending, this is called "red-lining" and is illegal.]) and outputs a yes-or-no answer, sometimes with hints about what need to be changed to get a yes.

Manual underwriting is the same thing, only it's a person doing the same thing, and you can talk a person around.

Why might you need to do that? Well, I bought a rental building after I bought my primary residence, and I intended to move into the top unit in the building. Automated underwriting failed that because "primary home with more bedrooms and bathrooms" is "better" than "apartment in rental building" according to automated underwriting.

Since my lender also had manual underwriting, I was able to explain my situation to them, and why an apartment was preferable (I still don't understand why "I'll live there for a year to keep an eye on my investment" wasn't enough reason. They openly acknowledged that it was the superior way to do it, but it didn't move the needle on the formula)

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#126

Post by bradleyjg »

Equifax wants global peace. Class lawyers and settlement administrators want a big payday (in cash, not credit monitoring). The judge wants the case off his docket.

No one represents the interests of the class. Class action lawsuits aren’t designed to further the interests of the class. They are designed to encourage ad hoc, profit driven, independent regulators.

Whether this is a good idea or not is a tough question (I lean towards no) but if you aren’t clear on what the system is trying to do you will certainly find it confusing and frustrating.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#127

Post by AtHeartEngineer »

benj111 wrote: post #102
criley2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just hacker news, it's pervasive in any community where people who value intelligence meet. It's because cynicism is a lazy shortcut to a 'smart opinion'. How do we sound smart with zero effort? Well we don't want to be gullible (everything is good and fair!) so we do the opposite (everything is corrupt and bad!). I really wish it were more than that.

So what you're saying is, everyone says something is black (or white to appear smart), so therefore to appear actually smart, I should say everything is a shade of grey?

Everything is a shade of grey Seriously though, most of the time it actually is, and it's almost always more complex than we realize.

Saying something like "Amazon is good" well, that's an opinion, definitely grey. Saying "This is exactly 1 inch", well, it probably isn't and the more you care about it's accuracy, the harder it is to measure. Most things are like that. Clear cut at first, and increasingly more difficult the more precise you go. The devil is in the details.

So, yes, if the only options are black and white, the answers are generally easy, you've got a 50% chance of being wrong. As soon as you blur the line, you're basically wrong all the time. The goal is to be less wrong, and to improve, make progress.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#128

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #79
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, nobody cares. I remember how long it took before Netflix finally supported a player on Linux desktop. And in the end, their decision had zero to do with customer demand or complaints for that feature. You can log reasons for bad business outcomes all day long, millions and millions, and it won’t change corporate behavior.

Just pointing out that this analogy doesn't hold. Netflix's customer base running desktop Linux are a rounding error for the foreseeable future. 99% of any lender's customers would be at least somewhat pleased to drop Equifax and none of them receive any benefit from using Equifax's service over their competitors.

The amount of people who will actually demand a lender to omit Equifax is also complete roundoff error and insignificant compared with political dealing etc.

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#129

Post by dwild »

amalcon wrote: post #115
exabrial wrote: post #76

Everyone needs to realize that the whole "fine" was just an inside deal. Who do you think provides credit monitoring services? That's right, credit bureaus. That's why the they're pushing everyone to take the "free credit monitoring", so they recover the loss from the fine. If they were to pay all 140 million people $125, the sum would be $17b or so, which is an appropriate fine.

It's doubly painful, because the "free credit monitoring" on offer is provided by Equifax -- the exact company whose competence we don't trust anymore. The compensation for being affected by Equifax's security failure is a gratis security offering from that same company. For crying out loud, they could have at least paid Experian or TransUnion to do the monitoring: while they are just as shady, we don't have immediat…

> It's doubly painful, because the "free credit monitoring" on offer is provided by Equifax -- the exact company whose competence we don't trust anymore.

The free credit monitoring is provided by Experian, not Equifax. [1]

[1] https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/

Re: Equifax doesn't want consumers to get their $125

#130

Post by benj111 »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #117
benj111 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we get people like Trump.

He sure made some people's lives better.

Yes, but only a small demographic that actually votes.

If only 1% of the population actually votes, elected representatives will tend to represent that 1%. If you cede the centre ground you get extremists.

Say what you like about Trump, he managed to get his target demographic fired up and out to vote. $boring_reasonable_politician doesn't have the same ability by their nature to get people fired up, but we still need to vote for them.

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