Joshua Browder (previously) is the delightful teen computer science student who created a the Donotpay to fight parking tickets that saved millions for its users, then repurposed it to help homeless people apply for benefits.
Now, Donotpay will help you sue Equifax in small claims court, in any of the 50 US states. The bot fills in all the necessary forms, but you still have to serve them on Equifax and show up in court. Depending on which state you live in, you can sue Equifax for between $2,500 (Rhode Island, Kentucky) and $25,000 (Tennessee).
Browder hopes that his bot will bankrupt Equifax, the credit reporting agency that dumped dox on 143 million Americans, tried to trick its victims into subscribing to a lifetime of for-pay credit monitoring, lobbied to take away your right to sue the company (and tried to trick you into giving up the right in order to check whether you were breached), while its execs merrily liquidated their stock in the firm.
The bot, which launched in all 50 states in July, is mainly known for helping with parking tickets. But with this new update, its creator, Joshua Browder, who was one of the 143 million affected by the breach, is tackling a much bigger target, with larger aspirations to match. He says, "I hope that my product will replace lawyers, and, with enough success, bankrupt Equifax."
Chatbot lets you sue Equifax for up to $25,000 without a lawyer
[Shannon Liao/The Verge]
