Cargo Business Techwire

Friday, March 27, 2015

Federal judge approves $10 class-action settlement in Target data breach

A federal judge in Minnesota has approved a $10 million settlement deal in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed against Target, which was the target of a massive credit card hack that affected 40 million people in late 2013.

Under the Thursday deal, Target will put the money into a fund that then can go to class members for a maximum reimbursement of $10,000 each. However, after attorneys’ fees and other costs, individual payouts are likely to be significantly lower. Plus, only Target customers who haven’t been reimbursed by their credit card company are eligible.

"In principle it’s a reasonable approach for them to set aside this big pot of money for those who were really affected to recover any kind of losses," Sasha Romanosky, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, told Ars.

$10 million, of course, is a miniscule amount for a company that has profited about $3.5 billion between 2012 and 2014.

For more of the Ars Technica story: arstechnica.com