In 2017 Equifax publically announced that a data breach occurred and exposed personal information of 147 million people. Find out if you’re eligible to claim benefits.
The Federal Trade Commission posted information about the settlement late July on its website and encourages claims to be filed immediately. The credit-check company, Equifax, has reached an agreement with the FTC to offer a cash settlement, or free credit monitoring, and additional cash to those affected by the breach in terms of costs associated to repairing credit, accounts, etc.
To file a claim, go to EquifaxBreachSettlement.com. The deadline to file is January 22, 2020.
To find out if you are eligible to file a claim, go to the eligibility page and enter in your last name and last 6 digits of your social security number.
Claim Benefits
You may choose between two options of benefits:
- Ten Years of Free credit monitoring – This includes four (4) years of free credit monitoring between all three major bureaus and up to $1,000,000 of identity theft insurance. An additional six (6) years extra of free monitoring within the bureau (Equifax.)
- Cash Payments (capped at $20,000 per person) – This will be awarded to those that can prove losses from unauthorized charges to accounts, the fees associated with your accounts freezing, and any professional fees paid due to the data breach.
Initially, cash payment options were announced at $125 per person but with the inundated amount of claims that are being received, there will be less payout per person as the settlement is capped. $31 million of the $425 million settlement is set aside for automatic $125 payment claims, but may be a lower individual amount according to amount of claims. If you have already filed a cash payout claim and want to change to the credit monitoring option, the administrator will email to all filed claims the option to switch before payouts are issued. Payments will go out to those directly affected and proving costs associated with the breach with higher priority.
If choosing the cash payment option, beware that payouts will not be administered until January 23, 2020 and may be delayed further until allowed by the court. To learn more about the Equifax settlement, visit the FTC Data Breach Settlement page directly.
