Crooks stole personal info of 77k Fidelity Investments customers

Fidelity Investments has notified 77,099 people that their personal information was stolen in an August data breach.  The mega asset manager has not disclosed what data the digital crooks nabbed, but assured customers that the security snafu "did not involve any access to your Fidelity account(s)." In a letter sent to …

[bill 27]

Kinda sorta depends.

' Fidelity claims the information obtained by the data thieves only "related to a small subset of our customers." '

If you're one of the "77,099 people" then it's not such a small subset.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a mandatory minimum payment of say $200 directly to every customer whose data is illegally accessed? Doesn't mean courts or regulators can't decide on larger settlements to customers, nor should this affect penalties paid to authorities. By making the companies pay customers a minimum sum directly it minimises the need for class actions where the only beneficiaries are lawyers. Could perhaps have three tiers of payments depending on what is accessed, $200, $400, $800.

Obviously some of the largest hacks would bankrupt the negligent business - assets and operations would continue through Chapter 11 or local equivalents so the only people who lose out are the investors and the board, but if it's your pension invested in the stock you might not feel as keen on such a proposal.

[veti]

That... strikes me as a really good idea. By setting a fixed payment, you put a solid value on information security, which means now all those spreadsheet-merchants can calculate how much they should be ready to pay for it, which is something they just don't have right now.

A similar scheme was introduced to the UK's power sector in the 90s - customers affected by power cuts beyond a certain minimum duration got automatic compensation, depending how many hours they were without power. It was remarkable how good the national grid company suddenly became at restoring power after faults. Previously it could take hours, but with this scheme in place it was amazing how many faults were fixed within minutes. I'm out of touch now and don't know if the scheme still applies, but it certainly made a difference when I was observing.