How should you make your Equifax data breach settlement?

Are you looking for free money or free service? And what does it say in small print?

On July 22, the Federal Trade Commission confirmed that Equifax will pay as much as $ 700 million – and not less than $ 575 million – for the data breach in 2017, which affected the personal information of approximately 147 million people. And in the days that followed, a question arose: how do you get your own piece of action?

It's pretty good on the side of things. You can get up to 10 years of free credit monitoring, or if you already have credit monitoring (available for free through a service such as Credit Karma), you can get $ 1[ads1]25.

Most of us will probably skip for free money, but The details are where all this gets sticky.

On the credit monitoring site, your freebie breaks at least four years of monitoring of three Equifax, Experian and TransUnion agencies plus $ 1,000,000 for identity theft insurance and then up to six years with free Equifax credit monitoring. If you were a minor in May 2017, when the break occurred, you are eligible for 18 years of free surveillance.

The free money becomes even more complicated. Although the settlement sets off $ 425 million to pay for anything related to people affected by the breach, most of it covers all free credit surveillance. There are only $ 31 million available to cover cash payments, so while you can receive as much as $ 125, the number will go down as more people sign up for the cash.

If every one of the 147 million people affected by the data breach chose a cash payment, each person would get $ 0.21 each. If only a million people take money, you get $ 31 a piece.

Now, where are ways to get a bigger payout, but they only apply if you were directly affected by the data breach in some way. You can get repayment of different expenses and even get paid for the time you spent dealing with all that trouble. It will not apply to everyone, so you should read the FTC Settlement Guidelines if you believe you may be eligible.

For everybody else, your first step is to see if you were one of the 147 million captured by the data breach. You can do it here. If you are not eligible to participate in the settlement, it is still good news. This means that your personal information – including, critical, your social security number – was not exposed.

If you are qualified, your next stop is the Equifax site set up for people who want to file settlement claims. Even if you don't care about cash or free monitoring, you should review this process. Accepting one of the settlement options means you waive the right to sue Equifax later (say if your identity is stolen). But you also waive that right if you do not at all undergo the injury process by January 20, 2020.

Then the case. Most of the people affected will probably want to choose one of the two settlement prices. But which one do you choose? Free money is the simple, obvious choice. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted just as much on Friday, before the fine points in the cash settlement were fully understood. She later corrected .

Finally, you are the only one who can decide which option works best for you. I can tell you personally, when I had a better understanding of how cash payments could work, I went for free credit monitoring. Free money lures, but even though $ 125 was a guaranteed payout, the data breakthrough continued, and the SSN is still likely out there. I'd rather have 10 years of more robust identity theft protection.

Whatever you choose, settlement benefits will not be distributed until after the claims process ends in January 2020. Those who opt for free credit monitoring will receive an activation code. And those who go for cash can choose between check or Visa gift cards.