Equifax Settlement Capital One Data Breach

(Image credit: Anya Berkut)

published 5 August 2019

Ryan Ermey: Just when you were starting to figure out the details on the Equifax settlement, the FTC clarifies, then another breach hits at Capital One. Luckily, our intrepid credit writer Lisa Gerstner is on top of both stories and is here to explain everything to you and us in our main segment.

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Ryan Ermey: Unpopular items, things that you shouldn't put out there: adult clothing, which might be out of style, plus no one can try it on, outdated tech, no one wants your VHS tapes, books, those are probably taken to the library, and big ticket items because you're not going to get a good price. People are going to yard sales looking for a deal. No one is going to give you a good price for your ex-husband's Rolex.

Sandy Block: And I want to be that person. So obviously people look at yard sales for deals. Usually they find china and kids' clothes and books. But some of the tips that I got I thought were really interesting for getting a yard sale, one is to combine with your neighbors, because then you ... people love neighborhood yard sales. There's more stuff. Then you can combine your advertising. So combine your yard sale.

Sandy Block: That came up in my crowdsourcing too. It was interesting, I got two different views on this. One is yes, price things, because that gives you a bargaining place. And people might offer less, but that basically, you know ... And I think that might apply if you are actually selling things that you think have some value. If the purpose of your yard sale is just to get rid of stuff and maybe make a little bit of money, then I think the argument is no price, just best offer.

Ryan Ermey: ... you get rid of it for a song, and then whoever's thing that is, is upset, especially if you have all these people kind of coming and going, and different people were helping you out and working it, like we were talking about having the whole neighborhood do it. So that makes it good, organized, and it really gives, to me at least, a sense of stress relief that you don't have to completely make up prices on the fly for everything if people are mobbing you.

Ryan Ermey: Right. And the other side of that advice, you want people watching your stuff to make sure no one walks out with it. You want to keep the cash on your person. Don't have it in a box somewhere on a table that you might walk away from. You want to have a fanny pack or a carpenter's apron or something that you can put cash in. If it gets to be an uncomfortable amount of cash, go inside and put it in your house. And, obviously, like you said, don't accept $100 bills, don't accept checks.

Lisa Gerstner: I think it's a couple of things. One is the scale, particularly this Capital One breach that just came out, and then the Equifax breach where they reached a settlement recently. You're talking about a hundred million US individuals with Capital One, that's coming up on a third of the US population. And with Equifax, you're talking about over 147 million people, which is almost half the US population. So there's a good chance you were affected by one or both of these.

Lisa Gerstner: But the vast majority of it involved names, dates of birth, email addresses, phone numbers, that kind of thing. And while that's not quite as damaging as a Social Security number, it really sets up seeds to do phishing attacks. So they can do these very targeted attacks where they actually use your name and your information, and they might say, "Oh, we see you have this account. Can you confirm that you're the customer by giving us your Social Security number?" There are a lot of ways they can use that to try to get more information out of you possibly. So that's the concern with the Capital One breach. I think that's one of the big things they could do with that.

Lisa Gerstner: And now, with the Equifax breach, it did involve Social Security numbers by and large. And that's a piece of information that criminals can do a lot of harm with. They can open credit lines in your name, get medical care, rent an apartment, file a tax return. There's a lot of really difficult things to deal with that they could do with that. So with the Equifax breach, that's the big concern, and especially because that information can sit around for a long time. Your Social Security number and your birth date generally don't change, so-

Lisa Gerstner: So with the credit monitoring, you're going to get four years of three bureau monitoring, which is good, that covers all three major credit agencies, and you do want to find out what's going on in every one of those reports. So that's actually a pretty good value. I don't know of any other service that offers free monitoring of all three bureaus at once. After that, you get six years of just your Equifax report monitored. So that's one option you have.

Lisa Gerstner: The second one is just to get a cash payment, if you already have credit monitoring, is how they're wording that. So you're supposed to see that as an alternative. And it's been quite confusing and a little bit misleading because at first they were saying, "You'll get $125 if you choose this cash payment." But now it has come out, oh, well, there's actually this limited pool of money that they have for these cash payments, it's $31 million. And so many people have already made a claim that the FTC says, "Actually there's no way you're going to get $125." So-

Lisa Gerstner: Yeah. People want that money. And many, many people have claimed it. So now their thing, "Oh, you probably want to get that credit monitoring because you're going to be disappointed with the amount you get." The FTC is actually saying this already. Luckily, if you've already made your claim, you do have the option to go back and change it. They say they're going to be emailing people who claimed the cash and giving them the option to take the credit monitoring instead.

Lisa Gerstner: So that's one component of it. The second one is you can get cash reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses that you incurred related to this breach. So that could be fees you paid to freeze your credit reports because at the time the breach came out, people still had to pay fees to do that, fees for credit monitoring, things like that. They say you can even get reimbursed for fraud or identity theft that you experienced. To me, that's a little bit more of a fuzzy area. It's very hard to say, "Oh, this credit card was opened in my name, and it was tied to the Equifax breach." It's hard to say that. It's hard to say how lenient they might be on those claims. So that's just something to keep in mind if you're going to try to claim that.

Lisa Gerstner: And then you can also get up to $25 per hour spent just cleaning up or dealing with the breach in the aftermath. So if you spent time freezing your credit reports or you spent time on the phone with the credit agencies, that's something that you can claim. If you're going to claim less than 10 hours, you actually don't need to even provide any backup for that. You can just kind of describe what it is. Again, they also are saying now that there is a $31 million pot for that. So if people claim more than that in time, you won't get your full fees back on that. So that's something to keep in mind again is, depending on how many claims they get, you may not get everything back that you're asking for.

Lisa Gerstner: And then a couple other things, you get free identity restoration if you are an identity theft victim that lasts for seven years. And everyone in the country, regardless of whether they're a victim of the Equifax breach, get six extra Equifax credit reports free per year. So this is besides the three free ones you get from each bureau at annualcreditreport.com. You can get extra reports from Equifax.

Lisa Gerstner: I'm actually trying to do that myself, and it's kind of a pain because this news came out almost two years ago at this point. My credit card website doesn't even have those statements available, I have to ask for them. So I asked for them two days ago and now I'm waiting for these statements to come up so I can see, oh, what fees did I pay? Are they on this credit card statement? You have to decide, is it worth the work-

Lisa Gerstner: ... to do this. And it might be a few bucks a pop if you had to freeze all three of your reports and you spent a few bucks on each one, and then you had to unfreeze them later, and freeze them again. It can add up. So it might be worth doing that. So anyway, bank and credit card statements might help you prove that, any receipts that you have or emails confirming that you bought some service, those are the kind of things I'd be looking for.

Lisa Gerstner: So for these claims, you have until January 22nd of 2020, next year, for any current claims from the breach until now. And then after that, there is an extended deadline. So if something happens next year and the following years, you have until January of 2024 to make those claims. So at least currently you still have a few months if you're kind of taking your time like I am trying to get these old statements and figure out what this is. So that's how you do that.

Lisa Gerstner: I think so. Just like you said, Sandy, even if it's not specifically the Equifax breach affecting you, I think we all have to assume our personal information is out there, and we need to be careful. So I think credit monitoring is a good idea. If you can't get the Equifax monitoring from the settlement, there are other options. Credit Karma will monitor your credit for free with a couple of different agencies, and then Experian has one through through freecreditscore.com too, so you can try to cover it that way. Just helps you keep an eye on those reports.

Lisa Gerstner: One thing to keep in mind is that credit monitoring doesn't prevent identity theft. It just shows you if it may have happened, new accounts popping up on your report. So if you're trying to prevent new credit lines from being opened, the best thing you can really do is freeze your credit reports. So that completely blocks lenders from viewing them, and then responds to your request for new credit. So if an identity thief is out there, has your information, and tries to open a credit line in your name, it's unlikely they're going to be able to do that because most lenders aren't going to give out credit without being able to peek at your credit report.

Ryan Ermey: Well, there you have it, folks. Go get your free credit monitoring if you can. Lisa, do you have that website off the top of your head? It did freak me out because it was a .com, and it was like, "Oh, you got your Social Security number stolen. Here, give us your Social Security number and we'll let you know if you were affected." It did kind of freak me out, but it's a legit site, right?

Ryan Ermey: So this upcoming deal isn't actually part of the calculus that goes into the rankings, but brokerages do offer deals that incentivize you to sign up with their brokerage. And all of these I'm going to mention, I mean, they scale up or down depending on how much you deposit. You may not be able to get the full amount that I quote because that may be for people that have $150,000 to deposit. But even on a smaller scale, I mean, you might get some free stuff out of it. If it's $100-

Sandy Block: So say you've got a 401(k), you want to roll it into, you're retiring and you want to roll into an IRA, or maybe you left your job, look around for these deals, because very often you can get this money simply for moving your money from one account to another. So it's not new money, it's just money that you've had, but you're putting into there, and they will give you money for doing that.

Sandy Block: In our August issue, we have our annual rating of best banks, and our best internet bank is Ally Bank, which is now paying 2.1% on a savings account. Now, that may not sound like much, but I did a little googling around just before this podcast, and I'm not going to name names, but at some of the bigger banks that have branches that nobody goes into anymore, they're paying rates of about 0.03%, 0.05%. and I did find one example of a big bank that's paying 2%, but in order to get that 2%, you need to have $25,000, you have to have a regular balance of $25,000. so you have to give them $25,000 and not spend it. And you have to walk into the bank and ask for this account.

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Block joined Kiplinger in June 2012 from USA Today, where she was a reporter and personal finance columnist for more than 15 years. Prior to that, she worked for the Akron Beacon-Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. In 1993, she was a Knight-Bagehot fellow in economics and business journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She has a BA in communications from Bethany College in Bethany, W.Va.