How to claim your portion of the $700M Equifax settlement

Friday, July 26, 2019

In September 2017, Equifax, one of the country’s largest credit reporting agencies, announced that a major data breach had exposed the personal information of 147 million consumers.

Find out if you were a victim of the Equifax data breach by clicking here. You’ll be asked to enter your last name and the last six digits of your Social Security number.

The personal information that was hacked in the Equifax breach includes:

• Names
• Social Security numbers
• Birth dates
• Addresses
• Driver’s license numbers (in some cases)

After reaching a $700 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, victims of the breach can now make a claim for benefits. Benefits for victims include:

• Free credit monitoring (10 years of Equifax credit monitoring and four years of Experian and TransUnion credit monitoring), or part of the $31M cash settlement (the amount you receive will depend on how many claims for cash are made). To claim the cash compensation, you must certify that you have some form of credit monitoring or protection services on the date you submit your claim form, name the provider of those services, and certify that you will keep those services for a minimum of six (6) months;
• Reimbursement of up to $20,000 for time and money spent protecting your identity or recovering from identity theft; and
• Free identity restoration services for at least seven years if you were the victim of identity theft or fraud as a result of the breach.

To start your claim, visit the FTC’s website at ftc.gov/Equifax.

Whether you were a victim of this data breach or not, Consumer Action recommends freezing your credit file to protect yourself from attempted ID theft and fraud. To learn more about freezing your credit report, read our free “Freeze Your Credit File” publication.

All consumers in 2020, whether victims of the breach or not, will be eligible to receive six free credit reports per year for seven years from the Equifax website (that’s in addition to the one free Equifax report, plus your Experian and TransUnion reports, you can get at AnnualCreditReport.com).

Claims must be filed by Jan. 21, 2020.

To learn more about the Equifax settlement, visit the FTC website.

You may contact Equifax with questions:

Equifax Data Breach Settlement Administrator
[email protected]
PO Box 91318
Seattle, WA 98111-9814
1-833-759-2982