My private information is worth $30

Not much, proper PII sustainment over decades (generally) is too demanding for universities unless they have proper resources and knowhow as well.

The US banking system has some blame here as well, just knowing someone’s bank account details shouldn’t let anyone transfer money out of it. IBAN system is quite good at this, that people just share their account numbers with each other and even some merchants like restaurants accept payment through IBAN.

Oh that's easy. There's a business model at play here. The point of this information is to make you spend more, and the value of that information is something like 1%-2% (goods) to 30% (of things like credit card fees you pay) of what you spend more if the shops around you know this information.

So from your perspective, the net value of the information is negative. Very negative in most cases.

The power of this model is the adversarial aspect. If there's 2 stores, especially online, and store A knows this info it can be 10% more expensive and grow faster than store B. Which means stores can't choose not to pay, it's a losing proposition and these businesses will die if advertising works even a little bit.

This aspect is why Google, and everyone, want AI to "fight" over everything: the adversarial aspect. Because for any particular purpose, OCR, or even making entire movies, there's a level of AI that's "good enough". Google or Facebook might reach that level 6 months earlier than everyone else (I would have said 10 years earlier 5 years ago, but even OpenAI's advantage has has shrunk to 2-3 months now, so I feel 6 months is generous), and I'm sure that'll be a good business ... for 6 months, if done well. But if you can create a fight where the best AI wins, then AI is worth the highest amount anyone will offer ...

This is actual problem in general. As a rule, I never give my personal information online anywhere, always use fake info. However, there are a couple of cases when real info is necessary. If it's just my real name and phone number like for booking.com, that's maybe acceptable - just one weak point, little PII.

However, an institution like an university requires a bit more, like a copy my ID or a photo. And based on their attitude, I'm sure they'll get hacked sooner or later. Their IT is either outsourced or understaffed and of mediocre quality. The fact than noone broke in (?) is because nobody cared that much.

> An apology (with guarantees and plans for improvement with oversight) is better than put a low price and call it cost of doing business

How when this is a 0 price of doing business? And there is a plan: "the University has increased its vigilance in securing information that it maintains", after all "The safety and privacy of all members of the University community are a top priority" https://system.umn.edu/data-incident (this is from 23, not 21). And I'm sure there is some admin position for "oversight"! So if you're after empty words, they have those in spades! And would add the apology you requested if not for the extra legal cost, so I don't see how any of that is better.

> Also I don't understand the logic

Because you've perverted the logic from into some vague metaphorical abuse that can harm every time it happens.

> Why do we accept this in such case and not in others?

We don't because settlements such as this do not depend on whether the info is already public, so you get paid regardless. But also because in such case there is no harm (info is already public), and in other cases there is.

> why would that change anything?

for the exact same reason - because harm depends on the first publishing and you were talking about compensating for harm

Yes. $30/victim is the negotiated amount at which the lawyers make an acceptable profit.

I'm talking about the lawyers who initiated, orchestrated, and covered all costs associated with the class action lawsuit.

They typically get ~30% of the announced settlement. The headline figure in this case was $5M, so the lawyers likely got ~$1.5M.

That has nothing to do with the worth of each victim's information.