>As reported by Bloomberg, news of this massive new data breach was revealed as part of a class action lawsuit that was filed at the beginning of this month. I am so looking forward to getting my 2.99 USD check from this suit. Of course I need to apply for that check via an on-line site and give them all my personal information. Great time to be alive.
How much should National Public Data have to pay the people affected by this breach? The article says there are 2.9 billion people impacted. Let's take that at face value and assume that there are no duplicates in there. How much should each person receive? The article also says that USDoD tried to sell the data for only $3.5 million, so they value it at roughly $830/person.
Now, in class actions, not everyone takes the deal. Most people ignore it or never pay attention to the notice. Let's say, very generously, 10% of those affected take the deal. That would be 290 million people. If you gave each of them $100, that would be $29 billion dollars. Do you think National Public Data even has that kind of money? What if we gave everyone just your $3? That's $870 million. I don't think this data broker probably even has that much money.
Your only real hope of getting a sizable payout from this class is either a) NPD is sitting on a mountain of cash or b) a very small percentage of users get paid. Anything else and the money isn't there.
When people say that there need to be criminal, go-to-jail type repercussions for not securing data, this is why. People value their freedom much more than businesses value staying solvent.
Planet Money just did a great episode on how class action lawsuits actually work, from both sides[1].