Oh, yes, totally agree that the class action suits will result in a sweet $15 check or something. I guess my poorly phrased lament was just in reflection that even the max payout in small claims doesn't seem like a great result given that this stuff is out there permanently. I read some stats that indicated an average of 330 hours for a person to work through fraud on their credit reports or otherwise clean up an ID theft event.
Note that you don't have to file in small-claims court. Small-claims court was established as a convenient, easier way to handle dispute of (relatively) smaller amounts.
If you feel that Equifax has caused you, say, USD $100k in damages, you can certainly file a "regular" civil suit against them and ask for that amount.
The other way to deal with this would be to not do anything right now and exclude yourself form the class action.
In case something would be to happen you have the option to sue for full face value as long as it can be proven that this hack is related or the cause, but again that is a big if.
Having been a victim of identity theft I'd say that's accurate, if not low. It took me 10 years to clean up the whole thing(and I'm still worried about random letters).
Except you couldn't sue for potential identity theft - to sue Equifax for damages from identity theft, you'd have to prove it actually happened to you personally, and probably also prove Equifax is to blame (which may ironically be harder the more leaks are out there, as they could always claim it's not their leak that led to the theft but someone else's).
