Dear Dr. Per Cap: 

I had my personal information stolen during the big Equifax security breach a couple years ago.  I heard a settlement was finally reached. Am I entitled to any money?

Signed, Waiting Patiently

Dear Waiting

Welcome to the club.  You, me, and 147 million other Americans were effected by the major security breach at Equifax back in 2017.  And you are correct. The company recently reached a settlement that includes over $400 million to compensate consumers who were impacted by the breach.   As you may recall the hack was so enormous that nearly 45% of the entire U.S. population had vital personal information such as social security numbers, names, addresses, and birthdates compromised thanks to an online security flaw in a piece of software called Apache Struts – gotta love that name!  Moreover, hackers stole credit card numbers from over 200,000 Americans who had previously purchased credit monitoring services from Equifax, one of the three main credit bureaus.  

Here’s what you need to do to file a claim.  Go to the website specifically created to handle the breach www.EquifaxBreachSettlement.com.  Once there you’ll need to input your last name and last six digits of your social security number to verify that you we’re indeed impacted.  If so, you basically have three compensation options to choose from.

Option A

You can receive free, credit monitoring at all three national credit reporting agencies -Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.  Or if you already had credit monitoring protection at the time of the breach you can request a cash payment of up to $125 as reimbursement.  Not a huge windfall but better than nothing.  

Option B

If you spent time trying to recover from fraud or identity theft caused by the data breach, or if you spent time trying to avoid fraud or identity theft because of the data breach, such as placing credit freezes on your credit files or purchasing credit monitoring protection, you can be compensated up to $25 per hour for up to 20 hours.  Please note that the website makes it clear your payment could be less due to the number of claims filed.  My guess is that for most folks payments will be a lot less than expected so don’t count on treating the family to a $500 Amazon shopping spree. Also, you will need to thoroughly document the time and money you spent during this process so make sure to have those records handy.

Option C

Now if you actually lost or spent money trying to prevent or recover from fraud or ID theft caused by the breach and have not already been reimbursed you can receive reimbursement for up to $20,000.  Again you will need to document your claim in order to receive a cash payment. And of course, the number of claims and their amounts will impact the amount of your cash payment if approved.

Lastly, understand that the settlement is still awaiting court approval and no compensation will occur until after that date.  In most cases consumers have a six month window to file a claim so get busy. I myself opted for the free credit monitoring for whatever its worth.  There are a lot of other features to the settlement than what I’ve covered here so check out www.EquifaxBreachSettlement.com for more information.  Happy credit monitoring!

Ask Dr. Per Cap is a program funded by First Nations Development Institute with assistance from the FINRA Investor Education Foundation. For more information, visit www.firstnations.org. To send a question to Dr. Per Cap, email askdrpercap@firstnations.org.