Equifax will pay up to $700M over its historic data breach

[MUSIC] Equifax may pay up to $700 million as a result of a massive 2017 data breach that exposed the data of more than 147 million Americans. Afo what does this mean? Essentially if you were affected by the bridge you're eligible for up to $20,000 and, you know, reimbursement from Equifax over this. Now that is much easier said than done right. You basically have to prove that you are affected by one of these breaches and it's not like when your social security number is stolen. It's not like that personal contact you the Hey by the way I stole this from Michael. Right. I mean that is the big question right. They've set aside about $300 million of the settlement to pay out to consumers, but how do you even know if you qualify. Yes, so at a press conference earlier today, a representative from, the director actually of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had mentioned that if you were affected by identity theft or anything like that We're dealing with this breach, you're eligible for this like so if your identity was stolen after this breach had happened with the same data that was taken, you're pretty much eligible for it. You're going to get some money but you know, the full $20,000 that you really have to prove that it that it affected you that much. So it's not only identity theft. Money that you spend on attorneys, that you spend on accountants to deal with this, what you did. If you pay for a credit monitoring, that kind of thing. And the hours that you dealt with it, too, that you can get up to $25 per hour for up to 20 hours. You know from the settlement. What happens if though you weren't affected right away, right like the information wasn't used against you until like a year later two years later. Yeah. So I think they kept it in broad terms because of that. Okay. They specifically said if you were affected after this breach had happened, so if you are affected by identity theft or anything like that after. July 2017, which is when they were hacked and then they announced it in September though but I think they're going by the one that hack happened today. Okay, and then the sound and also Has some rules and changes that Equifax has to follow too. What's going on them? Yeah, so, Equifax along with paying up will now also have to improve its security standards, they're gonna have to do a yearly review of their own security standards, and then also every two years have to Have a third party review to make sure that it is doing what they say that they're doing. Cuz that's how this breach really happened in the first place. Right. They said that they were warned about a vulnerability in March. They told their staff to patch it. They didn't. And they only learned about it after they realized they had been hacked. Right, this as far as it's been, this is totally preventable. Yes.