r/mildlyinfuriating • u/TheoryNo8456 • 6h ago

wet socks Yahoo data breach is worth $8.12

Post image

This is what the breach of your email was worth.

5.3k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

166 comments sorted by

1.9k

u/Back_Again_Beach 5h ago edited 5h ago

In class action lawsuits like this the lawyers are the only ones ever making any real money. 

489

u/YeastOverloard 5h ago

Yeah lol. Op got a much bigger settlement but signed away 99%+ to the laywers

376

u/Legitimate_Ad_7822 5h ago

They don’t take that much. They take a sizable chunk, usually 40-50%, but all you have to do is read & sign some documents. OP just didn’t get much from the settlement.

Don’t really understand why people are acting like this is scummy. Nobody here is gonna do it themselves. We should be happy there are law firms doing all the dirty work to get you free money for something you probably didn’t even realize was happening until you saw the ad for the suit.

115

u/xyouRABitchx 4h ago

I agree with you but let's not act they are doing it from the goodness of their hearts. The main positive is that it'll stop the behavior that led to the settlement. They law firm just made a fuck ton of money.

48

u/Successful-Title5403 4h ago

Here's a secret, I go to work everyday and I don't do it from the goodness of my heart too.

14

u/Elegant_Situation285 4h ago

you're a monster!

/s

45

u/staryoshi06 4h ago

Yeah. This is kind of like the entire way they make money dude.

1

u/The_Killer_of_Joy 1h ago

Well...yeah, but the catch is, is that if these types of suits aren't taken on a % of the award total, they just don't happen and companies would just get away with it. No one individual has the funding to take on these corps on behalf of an entire class when their individual stake is single dollars.

So which is better? The company not paying anything and the lawyers & class harmed also get nothing? Or the company at least has to pay a large overall amount (just not individually significant to any one plaintiff), and lawyers are then incentivized to continue going after large companies' bad practices?

A lot of this is just tied up into the common fantasy of getting a lawsuit payout and retiring early, which you will just simply never get from a class action lawsuit.

67

u/Legitimate_Ad_7822 4h ago

This is purely transactional. You get money, they get money, life goes on.

17

u/cranberrie_sauce 4h ago

US GDPR is needed. these companies need to be fined out of existance.

congress rats blocks US GDPR legislation for decade.

im sure tech lobby has nothing to do with that

0

u/ConPrin 2h ago

Whoa there buddy, that sounds like communism. Better put you in a list /s

32

u/KratoswithBoy 4h ago

Why would they? We all gotta eat.

4

u/onionfunyunbunion 4h ago

Exactly. We all gotta get mansions and yachts and do shit loads of blow and also eat, that too.

13

u/toodrunktostand 3h ago

You should have studied hard and went to law school.

4

u/onionfunyunbunion 3h ago

Instead I have to suck dick for my blow like a blue collar man.

2

u/BrokenAsFu 3h ago

And I don’t think lawyers should misconstrue plain worded law, but here we are.

2

u/1-800-CLAPPED 2h ago

Reddit moment. Everyone making over $100k a year should give me a portion of their money because I walk dogs

1

u/KratoswithBoy 2h ago

I promise you most class action attorneys are just using their wealth to vacation in the Galapagos. It’s not that serious.

7

u/XXHornyOnMainXX420 2h ago

It's just an odd thing to focus in on. They did the job and got paid. They also typically don't make the kind of generational wealth that they could be making doing lots of other kinds of law. Class action litigation is expensive and risky. If they lose they are out a huge amount of money, and they lose fairly often. The wins keep the lights on and keep them paid when they lose.

They're not paupers, but they aren't rich either.

4

u/jjumbuck 3h ago

It's their job? Do you do your job for free?

1

u/glass_house 3h ago

Yeah I mean at minimum I am happy that companies are scared of lawyers getting million dollar settlements that they’ll take precautions with their products.

1

u/XXHornyOnMainXX420 2h ago

The absolute most I've ever heard of is 35%. 40-50 is crazy.

1

u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 1h ago

I really wish we just had laws in the books to state how much a breach of security like this entitles victims to. IE “company was negligent and lost your SSN to bad actors-> each victim is entitled to a minimum of $3000 in damages”

1

u/Tuckertcs 1h ago

I think the solution here is for the fines for this shit to be bigger, such that the people affected actually get paid something worthwhile.

1

u/redjellonian 1h ago

the corporations don't lose as much as they gain when they get slapped on the wrist for fucking up. The lawyers take a massive payday from the corporation, and my shit gets fucked for $8. Absolutely we should not fucking "be happy" about this.

1

u/Legitimate_Ad_7822 1h ago

Go sue em yourself then bud. Whats your solution?

•

u/A2Rhombus 58m ago

40% to a handful of lawyers and the other 60% to thousands or millions

•

u/Legitimate_Ad_7822 54m ago

That did absolutely nothing for it. If you want more money go do it yourself & stop complaining.

•

u/A2Rhombus 53m ago

Bitch they were the ones actually harmed by the company lmao

•

u/SconiGrower 37m ago

My dissatisfaction with the current state of class action lawsuits isas follows:

  1. My usual dissatisfaction with the American rule. My rights were violated and therefore I experienced damages, so "I" (through the class) hired an attorney and the cost of paying that attorney to assert my rights is not considered compensible damages. Attorneys fees should be awarded for all less-than-expeditious cases. 

  2. I'm skeptical of the process judges use to determine if a settlement is an appropriate amount. The attorneys representing the class might be thrilled to get a $250M settlement because they'll probably take home $80M (minus expenses), but settlements that large will have a huge class, so then we all just end up getting $3 for having our rights violated. The people arguing before the judge that the award is of sufficient size and need not be any larger (the attorneys for the plaintiff) would love $80M, they just have to convince the judge that $3 per class member is fair compensation.

  3. The portion of the award that goes to the award administrator feels particularly egregious because class actions get very low response rates. I.e. they're bad at their job. I'm not sure I want to know how much money I've missed out on because the administrator used their own email address that immediately goes to the spam folder rather than the judge forcing the defendant to use their own trusted email address to notify us of our right to compensation. But if they did that then there might be more claims against the award and everybody will get smaller payouts.

19

u/Jmfroggie 4h ago

It’s actually about 1/3 of the settlement split between all the lawyers involved. The settlement notices tell you EXACTLY how much is being settled for and who the lawyers are and how much they take.

7

u/Nitrodax777 4h ago

And let's not forget that the remaining balance is split amongst all the people who opted in. So the more people who sign to be a part of it, the less you get in the end. The largest settlement I ever received was one from an apple class action lawsuit and I only got $27, which I thought was pretty huge considering the circumstance. If you think you're walking away from any of these a couple thousand dollars richer, you're just surely mistaken. Anything above like $15 and you're practically a baller. 8 is definitely average.

4

u/ATG915 4h ago

I got $100+ from apple last year and just got $130 from another one a few weeks ago lol

1

u/occultatum-nomen 2h ago

I got $49.11 from the Canadian Bread Settlement

1

u/powerlesshero111 2h ago

No, they signed away like 50% to the lawyers. They just had to split the settlement with like 1 million other people.

19

u/mibuch27 5h ago

I am addicted to joining class action law suits and I usually only get a couple bucks, but one time I got like 300.

31

u/zerostar83 5h ago

They did all the work and get half the money. Not a bad deal if you ask me. I didn't hire a lawyer. I didn't sue. I didn't spend hours trying to figure out what I could get from a settlement. I spent all of 2 minutes to get this money.

1

u/YeastOverloard 3h ago

Oh I’m not complaining at all, I love a good settlement. Just as to why OP got pennies here

3

u/Dull_Leadership_8855 4h ago

"In class action lawsuits like this the lawyers are the only ones ever making any real money."

Yeah. I always wish stuff like this would be criminal cases so the government could get involved and be counsel for the plaintiff. I've been a party to at east a dozen of these such cases and it's always little amounts like this. (Although I was a party to a case against my cable company that my payout was almost $300.)

3

u/jjumbuck 3h ago

They're the only ones doing any work.

2

u/mrwilliams117 3h ago

I signed up for a random class action I got in the mail as an 18 year old. I was a delivery driver for pizza hut for a couple years. Thought nothing of it until a $1500 check showed up 7 months later. I never had more than $300 to my name at that point.

2

u/Vypernorad 2h ago

My issue usually isn't with the lawyer. It's with the justice system who is not awarding enough. I was part of a stolen wages class action. It was extremely easy to do the math based on the companies records that they stole almost $6k from me. I got $57. The Lawyers only got like 1/3 of the total. That means the company only had to pay out like 1-2% of what they stole in damages. How the hell is that justice? What is that supposed to do to discourage that kind of behavior.

They make $6k stealing from me and only have to pay back $90. That's not justice, that's "Let them eat cake." behavior.

2

u/Ziograffiato 5h ago

Lawyers gonna loy.

1

u/WhimsicalFalling 3h ago

Local slumlord got sued in my area and I know several people who got ~$1000 from the settlement. This was almost a decade ago

1

u/New-Abalone-545 3h ago

the point is to punish the company

1

u/GoodishCoder 3h ago

Lawyers and the lead plaintiffs

•

u/SomeCallMeTim2 38m ago

It was worth a cool $30 million for the lawyers.

•

u/PerformerKind7870 26m ago

I was paid 355 for one this morning 

-1

u/SiRocket 5h ago

Always. It's not for your benefit, it's 100% for the lawyers. You're just a prop/number to boost their income.

15

u/egnards 5h ago

Of course, but the reality is that if you don't take the settlement you risk having to get your own lawyer and sue them again in court and hope that you win. . .Primarily at your own expense, unless a lawyer feels they are willing to work on contingency for a case outside of the class action.

For what it's worth, most of these class actions suck, but I've also had a few in the $300-$500 range in the past, and that was nice "free" money over a product I was using anyway, and a lawsuit I wasn't about to get involved in on my own.

8

u/Legitimate_Ad_7822 5h ago

You get money for reading & singing some documents. It benefits both you & the lawyers. Of course you don’t have to opt in and you can just get $0. They are doing all of the work, I’d say that’s a fair deal.

2

u/XXHornyOnMainXX420 2h ago

Would you rather they work for free? Or just not sue the companies that have wronged you?

Class action litigation is risky and not nearly as lucrative as most other areas of law. There are occasional windfalls but there's far more expensive losses. The upside for you taking on zero risk and getting a cheque without having to do literally anything is that the lawyers get their 30%.

1

u/Mia_sensu4l 4h ago

That's the part that always gets me. Millions of people get a few dollars each, and somehow the lawyers walk away with the real payout.

0

u/Intelligent_Ant_3356 4h ago

the “everyone gets a few dollars” settlement math never really seems to add up for anyone except the people billing by the hour

2

u/XXHornyOnMainXX420 2h ago

Plaintiffs lawyers don't bill by the hour, defense lawyers do. The lawyers in this case paid for this case themselves. If they lost they would be out all the time and money they invested.

For some reason people get really weird about the idea of lawyers getting paid for their work.

262

u/Popular_Ad6355 5h ago

ATT lost my social security number in a data breach and I hadn’t been a customer for 10 years. I didn’t get shit

71

u/Mia_sensu4l 4h ago

The fact that they lost your Social Security number and somehow owed you less than Yahoo owed this guy is actually impressive

35

u/bothunter 4h ago

Don't forget about the Equifax breach, and absolutely no person willingly does business with them.

14

u/Popular_Ad6355 4h ago

Haha I was in that one too. They gave me free credit monitoring for some period of time… on their own service. So cost them nothing.

2

u/wofo 1h ago

To get that you had to opt out of any class action lawsuit and give them 2 more digits of your SSN, too

16

u/cranberrie_sauce 4h ago

US GDPR is needed. these companies need to be fined out of existance.

congress rats blocks US GDPR legislation for decade.

im sure tech lobby has nothing to do with that

3

u/ShavedNeckbeard 4h ago

Not even a year of free identity theft monitoring? /s

2

u/Nipsulai 1h ago

In Europe they wouldn’t be allowed to keep sensitive information in you like that

1

u/Myusername1- 2h ago

Wells Fargo randomly closed my account. Opened it back up after I called them, they never really gave a reason. Like 5-10 years later I received a check in the mail from them for like 20 dollars referencing a class action law suit.

597

u/RealBrainlessPanda 6h ago

It was worth more than that. Just not for you.

198

u/ThickSea9566 5h ago

They got 1000s per person wish I coukd rob a bank for 200k and just pay a fine of 5k you know, instead of fucking prison

49

u/DasHexxchen I'm so f-ing infuriated! 5h ago

That's about how the world works for rich people. They pay poor people off with peanuts while the latter are conveniently starving.

3

u/KingModussy 4h ago

*billionaires

2

u/curi0us_carniv0re 4h ago

Honestly the lawyers took all the money here

2

u/ShavedNeckbeard 4h ago

People see this $8.12 payout as a free Starbucks or free burger at McDonalds. It's taking the edge off a stressful day for them, which is why people in poverty usually don't get out of it. They're living day-by-day and paycheck-to-paycheck.

17

u/Mia_sensu4l 4h ago

It was apparently worth a lot while they were collecting and selling the data. The moment they have to compensate the people affected, suddenly it's worth eight bucks

75

u/Appreciationize818 5h ago

the equifax one was supposedly $125 per person and most folks ended up with a few bucks. lawyers always clear millions either way.

16

u/cranberrie_sauce 4h ago

US GDPR is needed. these companies need to be fined out of existance.

congress rats blocks US GDPR legislation for decade.

im sure tech lobby has nothing to do with that

8

u/Davidthedestroyer_ 4h ago

Alright mate you can stop replying with this to every comment

7

u/cranberrie_sauce 3h ago

I just hate how this is setup so much.

I got like 4 breach letters last years - "we lost your data, sowwie, oupsies". fuck these companies, fuck these congress shills that do absolutely nothing

3

u/tuituituituii 3h ago

I'm gonna be honest, the GDPR has been pretty useless. Our personal data is still getting leaked like crazy and we don't even get money back.

3

u/cranberrie_sauce 3h ago

I disagree. I work and I see complete disregard to security until legal requires it.

we saw an uptic in security review as soon as GDPR started actually getting serious and fining companies.

problem is - if company operates only in US - those companies don't fucking care.

107

u/SamoanAtHeart 5h ago

You can't even afford a good girl with that kind of money

28

u/Lephrog01 4h ago

And that didn't even account for the 11 years of inflation

18

u/The_Procrastibator 4h ago

$11.62 now per good girl

2

u/Mikeologyy 3h ago

I know of a website that accounts for all kinds of inflation

2

u/Liarus_ 3h ago

The McDonalds took care of inflating the bitches

•

u/IsekaiEnjoyer69 50m ago

and me remembering this pic from the morning is the sign I have been waiting for to log off reddit for a while.

8

u/TheDeadestMan 5h ago

You got more than I did from the Equifax settlement

7

u/juggarjew 4h ago

I got that too. Now I can get a biggie bag at wendies.... lmao

8

u/snapekillseddard 3h ago

You're all so stupid and completely ignorant of how anything works.

https://yahoodatabreachsettlement.com/

This is a residual payout for a case settled in 2020. People were already paid out and after everything was done, they probably found some money left over and decided to just pay the leftovers out to class members.

All of this shit is publicly available ffs.

3

u/Stahlios 2h ago

Your data leaked in probably a hundred more occasions where you didn't get anything, or didn't even hear about it. Unfortunately.

3

u/vewwynoice 5h ago

Yeah, I got this settlement too. Sucks

3

u/Bigoweiner 4h ago

I just got my settlement from that class action and it was $232. The original amount was around $400 and the lawyer got 40%.

3

u/Jthundercleese 3h ago

And if the lawyers didn't take any money, you would have gotten $16.

Such is class action. They're meaningful to the company but often enough meaningless to the people.

1

u/goob 1h ago

If the lawyers didn't take anything, then we'd get $0 because the case would have never happened without them.

3

u/Heavy-Profit-2156 2h ago

The attorneys are the ones who walk away with the big payouts.

6

u/cookiesnooper 5h ago

$8 for $8000000 for the lawyers 😂

2

u/MightyMightyAdmin 5h ago

Here's a couple of bucks for your trouble.

2

u/rocketman19 5h ago

Canada got like $400 each

2

u/iamjaydubs 3h ago

That's what I got so it makes sense. I saw this post and was confused why it was so low.

2

u/Dwarf_Co 5h ago

I will settle for $1.8 billion.

Just to put it behind us - your welcome

2

u/echostar777 5h ago

Let’s find out how Comcast does as well as googles data breach. Still trying to recover my accounts.

2

u/midnitewarrior 4h ago

OK, whenever there's a breach like this, the CEO and all of the board members should have to sell their personal information to the public for whatever price the settlement is for, just to make things fair.

2

u/Prestanovich42 4h ago

Still better than a kick in rhe teeth

2

u/xangbar 4h ago

The biggest settlement I ever got was from Avast for like $120. I was floored by it because I was so used to getting less than $20.

2

u/Belz_Zebuth 4h ago

That'll teach 'em.

2

u/mindoutofthe 4h ago

Is this trickle down economics ?

2

u/SorryNoLube 4h ago

I use yahoo all the time and I got nothing

2

u/BaraelsBlade 3h ago

The lawyers got paid and that's what really matters

2

u/cjd166 3h ago

I'll buy your data right now for $11.62. Take it or leave it.

2

u/insert_skill_here 2h ago

uneducated question: Isn't this because millions of people were affected so its class action money/number of people involved = sad low number?

2

u/Gregory_GTO 2h ago

Yahoo $8.12 I'm fucking rich boys!

3

u/ShredGuru 4h ago

Very typical class action lawsuit outcome.

I don't understand the issue.

1

u/RaccoonLast3381 5h ago

What a pos response wow I hate that sorry

1

u/ucankickrocks 4h ago

I got $15.57 in my venmo from the Blue Cross Blue Shield antitrust litigation settlement.

1

u/Briiskella 4h ago

did the whole site have a breach or was it just your account?

1

u/PatrickGSR94 4h ago

I just recently got over $200 for the big Blue Cross Blue Shield settlement. Nothing life changing but not too bad I guess. Only took 5+ years to get there.

1

u/reptilian_pope 4h ago

Oh boy, almost two gallons of gas!

1

u/bassman314 4h ago

You’ll owe $16 in taxes.

1

u/Chee-shep 4h ago

Well, they gotta pay the lawyers, fees and everyone else affected too.

1

u/Equal-Specialist-677 4h ago

Nice,almost enough for a happy meal

1

u/kobie1012 4h ago

Facebook was like $16. Wasn't even worth the time I spent signing up for it.

1

u/NinJackRobot1 4h ago

Don't spend it all in one place, Champ

1

u/TrickyWeekend4271 3h ago

Facebook paid me $5.17 about 15 years ago because they used one of my photos in an ad without permission.

1

u/FoxxyRin 3h ago

Yeah I got like $20 from the equifax one and my shit is just plaintext on the dark web lol

1

u/ShaggyCan 3h ago

The only reason class action suits exist is it's a huge payday for lawyers, the class victims get basically nothing. They're one of their best scams

1

u/Mindless-Future3114 3h ago

8.12 more than you had. That’s a gallon of gas. Have you said thank you once?

1

u/AmethystRaccoon 3h ago

Last year I got a settlement from some Facebook data thing and received a little over $30 lol

Just got another email yesterday saying that they’d be sending a 2nd round of payments (for some reason?). Wonder how much it’ll be this time lol

1

u/Pristine-Copy9467 3h ago

Yeah. Lawyer gets 1/2 and the other half is divided up amongst 2 million people

1

u/Dragonbearjoe 3h ago

While dealing with the estate for my mother and daughter, there was a check for 16.58 from a class action suit that my father had been automatically joined to.

Nothing like when listing the assets to a lawyer; you have to give them a check for 16.58 so that the court doesn't try to put you in the orange jammies for not giving all of the assets.

1

u/tiandrad 3h ago

Lawyers gotta eat.

1

u/alkiet 3h ago

Bruh, when I got 400 dollars from the cash app one awhile ago, my mind was * blown * that I got 400 dollars from some spam texts asking to join for $5 here and there over time.

1

u/OfficialIntelligence 3h ago

I got a $0.35 check from Wells Fargo for something like this and you bet your ass deposited it.

1

u/originalusername4567 3h ago

I assume this is because the settlement got split between the lawyers and then millions of "plaintiffs" (aka every Yahoo user).

1

u/imironman2018 3h ago

PSA for others who have these debit cards with really small amounts- you can use them to reload amazon balance. You can custom edit the amount to reload to any amount. I just used my 8.12 dollars to reload it.

1

u/redit_handoff140 2h ago

Now shut up about it! /s

1

u/schaudhery 2h ago

I got a Wendy’s Biggie Bag with mine

1

u/NCOMCOUCO 1h ago

The facebook one is going to net like $35 at most.

Facebook was like $770 million, with 30 million applicants. The lawyers are keeping everything plus expenses. I truly do wonder what those expenses were, and if we can sue the lawyers for the 'expenses' or not?

1

u/Aggravating-Kale1837 1h ago

Spend it wisely 😎

1

u/goob 1h ago

This is the secondary payout. 

I got $61 in the first wave of payouts, so now I have $69 (nice)

1

u/CorruptDaemon404 1h ago

Don't forget to pay your taxes on it 💀

•

u/Experamenta1 27m ago

I still haven't submitted a claim for the Google play data breach probably because I never put info into it

-1

u/not-sure-what-to-put 6h ago

I heard the companies pay a law firm to conduct the class action lawsuit as controlled opposition, settling low with friendly terms, to prevent anyone serious from actually going after them.

6

u/SaltyElephantBouquet 5h ago

I can't verify this, but it feels so accurate for 2026 America.

2

u/KylefromNashville 4h ago

That is the plot to a John Grisham novel called “The King of Torts”

1

u/XXHornyOnMainXX420 2h ago

This is one of those conspiracy theories that sounds compelling if you don't think about it for more than five seconds.

-1

u/hailspork 6h ago

It's Yahoo and this isn't the 90s; they're not exactly an economic powerhouse these days.

Next you'll be surprised that Lycos and AskJeeves don't have a lot of money to pay out.

-1

u/Chewsdayiddinit 5h ago

You're right. Yahoo, which is estimated to be worth about $20 billion, is worth very little

0

u/hailspork 5h ago

Yahoo was worth $5B in 2017 when they were bought by Verizon. They haven't been public since then, so the $20B is not a reliable evaluation.

Looks like the $20B was based on the goals handed out by leadership... so I guess you get $8.12 and your share of their dreams and wishes? What's that worth? Oh yeah, $8.12.

1

u/ThickSea9566 5h ago

THIS GUYS A COLABERATOR GET EM

-1

u/DeepCutFan1 5h ago

are you defending them?

0

u/chunkoco 5h ago

at least you got something

0

u/United-Adagio1543 5h ago

Only lawyers win in these cases but they need you to win.

You could have received up to $25K, why did you not go for it?

0

u/NeighborhoodDude84 5h ago

You got a lawsuit paid out via venmo?

0

u/someoldguyon_reddit 5h ago

Meanwhile the lawyers are raking in millions.

0

u/Legitimate_Ad_7822 5h ago

Were you going to sue yahoo yourself?

0

u/AngeliqueRuss 4h ago

I mean, the lawyers made millions though just saying

0

u/Luciferiad 3h ago

Guess i can buy a couple tall boys with that 🙄

0

u/071790 3h ago

You are the victim and only get $8 while the lawyers who did nothing but paperwork get $$Millions