Governor and Attorney General Announce Settlement with Equifax Inc.

Governor Cuomo and Attorney General James announced that New York has reached a settlement with Equifax Inc. as a result of the 2017 data breach that exposed the sensitive financial and personal information of millions of Americans, including 8.5 million New Yorkers. Under the settlement, the companies will pay a fine of $10 million to DFS, $9.2 million to the New York Attorney General’s Office as part of $175 million to Multi-State Attorneys General including New York, and Equifax has committed up to $425 million to the consumer restitution fund.

In addition to the fine, Equifax will provide New York consumers with credit monitoring services and free annual credit reports, and will pay restitution to consumers affected by the breach. New York consumers who were impacted by the data breach may enroll in at least four years of credit monitoring by the three major credit-monitoring services – Equifax, Experian and Transunion – and receive two free credit reports from Equifax every 12 months for five years. Consumers will also be able to submit claims for reimbursement for certain losses resulting from the data breach to a court-appointed administrator.

Governor Cuomo said:

“Credit rating agencies have a responsibility to safeguard consumers’ financial and personal information, and this egregious data breach and the agency’s response was completely unacceptable. In New York we are sending a clear message to these agencies that they will be held accountable if they leave consumers’ private data vulnerable to exposure, and we will continue our rigorous oversight of these agencies to ensure New Yorkers are protected in the future.”

Attorney General James said:

“Equifax put profits over privacy and greed over people, and must be held accountable to the millions of people they put at risk. This company’s ineptitude, negligence, and lax security standards endangered the identities of half the U.S. population. Now it’s time for the company to do what’s right and not only pay restitution to the millions of victims of their data breach, but also provide every American who had their highly sensitive information accessed with the tools they need to battle identity theft in the future.”