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Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Saying it's a 44% chance you're affected is really skewing things away from how severe they really are. At least 22% of Americans are under 18. There are actually 167 million Americans who own one or more credit cards, so this actually affects 86% of all US credit card holders.

Not to shamelessly promote, but as soon as this broke yesterday I brought this to the attention of my firm and we filed I believe this morning.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/classactioncom-files...

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Could you guys push for free credit freezes and unfreezes going forward instead of some sorta ridiculously small monetary comp. It should be free at all bureaus, with Equifax picking up the bill for unfreezing and freezing at the other two.

I'm just a developer in marketing, but I can suggest it.

Well, at least let them know that some nerds on the internet asked for this :)

And. Make it possible to do the process online for all three credit reporting agencies (one of them still requires a phone call). Having to pay and spend at least 20 minutes on the phone to lift your credit freeze because is just ridiculous.

Better yet, lets do away with credit reporting agencies. Why should any oligopoly or, indeed any non-government entity be allow to have the power to cause so much harm to is with effectively no accountability?

How do you prove your identity when freezing and unfreezing? Is it similar to how you "prove" your identity when you apply for credit?

You would use a PIN that is generated at the time of freezing the account. However, this doesn't prevent a future attack from obtaining the PINs.

And if I forget my pin?

Glad filings are being made already, I wonder if it will be possible for someone to also seek relief/guidance for individuals checking to see if they were breached on trustedidpremier.com and may be inadvertently waiving their rights to class action suits and instead being forced into individual arbitration.

Based on the fact their privacy policy and terms of service were just updated on Sep 6, this seems pretty blatant. Browserwrapped agreements haven't held up in most cases, but having the arbitration clause at the very beginning seems to be point of the entire thing. Pushing a notice 41 days after a breach (just in time for the 45 day requirement in most states) and directing individuals to check if they are impacted all while tricking them into waiving rights. Seems deceptive to me.

It'll be pretty epic for the class if you guys manage to settle this one for tens of millions of dollars too.

Another firm that filed in Oregon yesterday said they're seeking up to 70 billion in damages for clients nationally.

That's right, billion with a B.

I was just making fun of the info highlighted in the press release. If I have it right, the Target breach affected 41 million people. Helping them put it in the rear view mirror for ~$10 million is quite a service.

Maybe it was a different Target data breach?

I'm just saying that some firms try. There's really nobody making them accountable otherwise.

This isn't Equifax's first data breach and the others are pretty recent too.

That's how class actions work. The lawyers extract a fee from the perpetrator as protection against larger settlements/judgments. Perp limits their downside, law firm gets paid, consumers are left holding the bag.

AFAIK, one of our attorneys was involved in 2 with Target, one for $10mil and one for $13mil. We're also involved with Home Depot and other data breach cases. They scope of those breaches is much smaller than this one, by the way.

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