Over half of Americans can claim benefits in Equifax settlement; see if you are one of them

Earlier this week, the FTC announced that roughly half of the people in the United States are eligible to claim benefits under a settlement that the FTC and others reached with Equifax concerning a data breach. Now, the question is, were you affected and how can you claim your benefits?

If you head on over to ftc.gov/Equifax. you can use a tool to find out if your information, such as your Social Security number, was exposed in the breach. According to the FTC, you can learn about benefits, and start your claim to get free credit monitoring and possibly even cash. If your information was exposed in the breach, the settlement entitles you to up to 10 years of free credit monitoring. This means you’ll get an alert when:

somebody checks your credit history
opens a new loan in your name
opens a credit card in your name
says a payment is late.

If you are looking to receive cash, go to the site and you can inform them of the time spent in dealing with the issue.

Make sure to file your claim by January 22, 2020 to receive benefits.