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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Those solicitations I get in the mail to join class action suits always seem phishy to me, and I usually just throw them away. "There's a class action suit against a company you bought capacitors from 9 years ago! Give us your personal information and you may be entitled to a payout!" Uhh... no thanks, that's exactly what a scammer would say. How do people determine which ones are real, and what makes you decide to sign up?

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I search for the settlement and verify that there’s a real chain of news stories around it.

Best to date was the Apple small developer settlement that paid out $8k. Previous was the Google/Apple non-compete settlement.

I’ve never bothered with the consumer-focused ones. There are always so many class members you’re lucky to get a couple bucks - as in the OP’s case.

But wouldn't a scammer try to use plausible, real class action lawsuits to scam people?

Or would a scammer use obviously fake class action lawsuits in order to filter for the stupidest people possible?

Depends on how many people fall for the scam I guess.

I don’t click on the link in the email, I find the settlement site through Google.

If the scammers can outrank they legit site, I am hosed though.

Facebook had to pay me $300. Waiting on similar from Google. Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act has real teeth, and if you see a tech company claiming they want federal privacy legislation, it's very likely with the goal of weaker federal laws which preempt BIPA.

Are you scared of them coming after you for a non-disclosure / non-disparagement clause? Someone who isn't me had a few of these because of breaches from other companies but can't really talk about them.

Google and Facebook's BIPA class action cases are well-covered in the media.

Facebook: https://www.facebookbipaclassaction.com/ and https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/01/facebook-illinois-class-ac...

Google: https://www.googlebipasettlement.com/ and https://www.engadget.com/google-photos-bipa-lawsuit-settleme...

Agreed, they seem like phishes but the best I've received was ~$5K and least was $0.25.

it’s also weird because this seems like the universal style of class action lawsuits? why are they so poorly formatted in such a consistently bad way? some legal tradition?

>> How do people determine which ones are real

You can in principle look up the case numbers that should be present in the court documents explaining the settlement. Alternatively you can look it up in a public database such as [1], (also a good way to find suits you qualify for, if you so desire).

[1] https://www.consumer-action.org/lawsuits

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