Consider it a part of your civic duty: driving up the costs of data breaches for corporations so they have an incentive to invest more heavily in security. The payouts to individuals are part of the $575 to $700 million settlement that Equifax reached with the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 48 states. (Indiana and Massachusetts are still pursuing their own lawsuits against Equifax.)

It’s an astonishingly large settlement for a data breach, though some people are still criticizing it as inadequate given the scale of the breach and the number of individuals affected. They argue that Equifax and other companies will view these fines as simply the “cost of doing business.” I’m OK with that. I think the costs of security breaches should, in some sense, be the costs of doing business, as opposed to an existential threat that drives the breached company into the ground. That way companies can weigh those costs against the costs of larger security investments and adjust their budgets accordingly. But I would like for those breach costs to be high enough to drive significant investment, and for that to happen, you have to do your part. (Also, if you won’t claim your check, then you forfeit your right to complain about how the costs of data breaches are too low.)