In other news:
2nd verse, same as the first…
6 Likes
I want the job sending the checks out if too many people apply. I can sit in my bathrobe and shout “Two dollars and eleven CENTS!!!” constantly.
1 Like
The very existence of a “credit reporting” company should be illegal. These bastards have the power to literally ruin your life, and you have no recourse. Their reports can determine what kind of job you can get, where you can live, what kind of vehicle you can drive - one bad credit report, even if it’s a mistake, can cost you the world, and even if there is any legal way you can get a correction - which there often is not - the effects of them misreporting on you can fuck up your life for YEARS. It’s time to dissolve these dens of thieves entirely.
7 Likes
I’m not a lawyer either, but I don’t think double jeopardy is a factor here, because they can – and likely will, screw up again.
As to how business is conducted in places like ours…we’ve voted a few more progressives into the House, hopefully some into the Senate soon, and dog willing, a change in the White House. It may not be as immediate as a sledgehammer, but even water can carve stone over time.
1 Like
As I pointed out in the previous Equifax thread, a credit rating is an intentional yoke.
3 Likes
The other way to look at it is that if you get less than $125, we’ve maxed out the damages that Equifax will pay.
1 Like
is there precedent for sending a cease and desist to companies to remove data about me from their system? (mail merges census data in to 147 million cease and desist letters)
How hard is it to go to the website and figure out whether you can get the $125? Make that: How hard for a journalist to do that?
I’m no journalist, but as Cory suggested, I did. And you know what? It’s far more involved than saying Gimme money. You have to be able to document damages.
Everyone else, IIRC, gets ten years of credit reporting — and the problem there is that many if not most card issuers provide that service anyway. Given that, who wants what one’s already getting from Equifax?
Even by the shitty standards of shitty class action settlements, this one is exceptionally shitty.
I guess all the professional journalists on this are reading some bullshit press release and mindlessly echoing same and don’t bother to the slightest investigation.
And this irresponsible laziness is part of the reason America’s in a crapper.
So which is better: stick with the payout, which appears to be dwindling by the hour, or opt out and perhaps bring a suit against Equifax’s very deep pockets and well-heeled lawyers? If one can prove damages.
2 Likes
It’s likely that the articles you read were not put out by a professional journalist anyway, they were likely PRs from CreditKarma.com spun into news stories. I read probably six different versions of the same exact story on multiple websites including CNN, FoxNews, Gannet newspapers, ABC, and CBS News.
The same story. The same suggestion you get creditkarma.com. Different bylines/authors. The same writing.
Jackie is a punk
Judy is a runt
Sorry. Something has to make me happy today when it comes to this shit.
I think it’s at least pitchforks and torches time.
1 Like
Let’s be very clear here: the class (of which you, I, and everyone else is a part) was sold down the river by the class counsel who represent us, and who will collect approximately $80 million in fees no matter whether you or I get a check for $125 or a check for $1.25. Despite being under an ethical duty to advocate in our best interests, they signed off on a settlement agreement that sets a hard maximum on Equifax’s generic payout to persons whose info was breached. (There is a separate provision with additional compensation available for persons who can prove actual loss. Most of us can’t.) They could have negotiated a cap that varies on a pro rata basis—perhaps for every 10% more people who file a claim than anticipated, the settlement pot goes up 10%. They didn’t do that. They agreed to Equifax’s bottom-line number for the entire settlement so long as their share (the roughly 1/3 going to attorney’s fees) was okay. The attorneys charged with representing all of us screwed all of us.
I don’t know about precedents for data removal, but I would like to say that I think financial information about me ought to be regulated at least as well as we regulate medical data about me.
sure, but reduced to $2.11
1 Like
yeah, “violated the trust of” is a weird way to put it. personally, i never willingly/knowingly entered into any business with equifax but i was still impacted by the breach and am apparently part of the class. i can only assume that some percentage of that 147 million is in similar cirumstances.
That’s kind of my field of day-job … trust me, regardless of regulation, anyone with a phone or an internet connection can access your health data. millions of hipaa “breach” every day, even just casually. They regulate it, audit it, independently verify and validate it, 100 times a year, but every health system (in US) leaks data and HIPAA allows it to a certain extent. It is also very nearly impossible to get copies of health data, or to remove health data from the possession of your providers. When an insurance company goes under a HIPAA audit, be it medicaid, medicare or private, think of the audit as a restaurant going through a health inspection. The employees cleaned up quite a bit before the auditor arrived. One of the reasons the US health system is so fucked is data management is spread across millions of disparate systems that cannot inter-operate and each health care organization spends insane amounts on human resources for data management. I would even venture so far as to say 9 out of every 10 of your healthcare dollars go towards something administrative, not something actually related to the facilitation of doctor meeting/treating patients.
I guess my point is, don’t assume your health data is regulated. 20 years of “innovation” have nullified this once-relevant law that governs your health data. Providers have slurped yours and other folks’ data to the point where they are managing hospitals like amazon warehouses.
2 Likes
Whatever the ur-source, far too many people who know better repeated it without verifying or confirming the details which, would take literally a few minutes to check out.
