www.AccountDataSettlement.com TD Ameritrade Class Action

Looks like yet another company I've done business with in the past is subject to a class action lawsuit. This time around, the details at www.AccountDataSettlement.com seem to suggest that I'm part of a group of people who had their email account compromised by TD Ameritrade. The class action alleges that email addresses were acquired from TD Ameritrade for the purpose of sending spam promoting certain stocks. I know I've gotten a number of pump-and-dump spam messages in the past, but had no idea they were tied to having an Ameritrade account in the past. The class action is looking for monetary and injunctive relief for the alleged injuries.

This TD Ameritrade class action lawsuit has to be one of the dumber class action lawsuits I've seen. While I take any data breach seriously, I'm not sure how you'd narrow down all the stock related spam that goes by on the Internet to one breach that collected email addresses. I'm particularly skepticalApparently compenstation for the lawsuit ranges from $50 to $2,500 per individual claimant. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. Would I be getting more money if I actually purchased one of the stocks in the spam messages? What if I had purchased one of the stocks and it went up and I profited? Couldn't that mean I should be thanking TD Ameritrade.

Looks like total compensation to all claimants is capped at $6.5 milion dollars, which includes attorney fees, so probably a total payout of about $3-4 million. If everyone in the class action got $2,500 that would be 1,600 people. If everyone got $50 it would be 80,000 people, which is a fairly small class as these things tend to go.