Equifax claims administrator says victims must provide more info to claim cash

Enlarge / Artist's impression of the deal being altered. (credit: Disney / 20th Century Fox)

If you're one of the millions of Americans who received an email this weekend from the Equifax breach settlement administrator, you're not alone. Nor are you alone if you were surprised or confused by the message, as more than a half-dozen Ars readers who forwarded theirs were. The message, however, is entirely legitimate, and the information it seeks is part of the claims process.

Equifax and the Federal Trade Commission in July reached a settlement relating to the company's completely massive data breach of more than 140 million Americans. As part of that agreement, anyone whose data was part of the breach could file a claim to receive either cash compensation or several years of free credit monitoring.

In order to receive the cash compensation, however, claimants certified that they already have some form of credit monitoring services in place. Such services are not only freely available to many credit card and bank account holders, but also are routinely given out to customers whose data is lost in a breach, and so tens of millions of claimants did indeed ask for the cash instead.

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