Reports on the Equifax credit file crisis continue to grab headlines; as noted yesterday, the immediate impact will be about $700 million, with the potential to quadruple that amount.
If you go to the court-ordered site, you can enter your last name and the last six digits of your social security number.
The response I received:
- Thank you
- Based on the information you provided, our records indicate your personal information was impacted by this incident.
- For more information, visit the FAQ page.
Following through, I now have the right to file a claim form and send it to the Settlement Administrator.
Once there, you get to select:
- Choose free credit monitoring, a cash payment (if you already have credit monitoring), or skip to the next section
- If you spent time recovering from the breach, you can request payment
- If you lost or spent money because of the breach, you can request payment
- Confirm how you’d like to get your payment
The final message on the site:
- This Is The Official Settlement Website For The Equifax Data Breach Settlement.
- It Is Operated By The Settlement Administrator, Not By Equifax.
Although I am on the list, I do not feel that I have been negatively impacted. Yes, indeed, I am one of the 147 million affected. Yes, my wife is also on the list. But so far, we have not experienced an issue. We each get text messages when one of our cards trigger a transaction, so we know we missed nothing. Two of our issuers replaced three cards, but other than that, it is business as usual in our financial matters.
But for the lawyers, Law.Com, a legal professional site, indicates that the class action lawyers will generate $77.4 million in fees from the fund. Now, that’s a win!
For the Riley household, we will just take the free monitoring and call it a day.
Overview by Brian Riley, Director, Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group