Data Breach

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Uber suffered a data breach in 2014 resulting in the compromise of more than 50,000 drivers’ personal information, including back account and social security numbers. Drivers brought a class action suit in federal court in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.  On May 10, a judge tossed the suit for a third time for lack of standing because the two named plaintiffs failed to allege that they suffered an injury in fact.
Continue Reading Uber Catches Break in Data Breach Class Action

In a recent post, we discussed the Canadian Cabinet’s announcement that Canada’s new data breach regulations go into effect on November 1, 2018. Despite announcing the effective date, Canada had not yet finalized these regulations.  However, on April 18, 2018, Canada unveiled the Breach of Security Safeguard Regulations: SOR/2018-64 (“Regulations”).

To highlight some of the finer points, in order to trigger notification requirements, the Regulations require organizations to determine if a data breach poses a “real risk of significant harm” to any individual had their information accessed in the breach.  If an organization meets this harm threshold, then the affected organization must notify the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, as well as the affected individuals.  …
Continue Reading Canada Releases New Data Breach Regulations

Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced an important administrative settlement with Altaba (Yahoo) related to the company’s failure to disclose a major security breach to its users and investors. Under the terms of the settlement, the company agreed to pay a $35 million civil money penalty to settle charges that it misled investors by failing to disclose one of the world’s largest data breaches in which hackers stole personal data relating to hundreds of millions of user accounts.
Continue Reading Yahoo Settles Claims by SEC regarding 2014 Data Breach

In August, 2017, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) proposed a settlement agreement with Uber stemming from its investigation of a 2014 data breach due to Uber’s “unreasonable security practices”. The lengthy investigation found that Uber’s employees were accessing customer’s personal information, and that there were security lapses in Uber’s third-party cloud storage service. That settlement agreement required Uber to implement a “comprehensive privacy program”; however, the agreement was withdrawn by the FTC and amended recently. Why, you ask? Uber experienced a second data breach in 2016, while the investigation from the 2014 breach was well underway. The 2016 breach was a result of those same security lapses in the third-party cloud storage service and Uber waited over one year to report that second breach. Uber’s handling of the second breach continued its trail of misconduct, clearly demonstrating that the company had not learned its lesson.
Continue Reading Uber Goes 0-2 in Data Breach Notifications

The Cabinet in Ottawa quietly proclaimed on March 26, 2018 that the official implementation date for Canada’s much-needed and long-awaited mandatory data breach notification laws will be November 1, 2018.  Oddly enough, the regulations regarding notification have not yet been finalized.  …
Continue Reading Canada’s Data Breach Notification Law Goes Into Effect November 1, 2018

On March 28, Alabama’s governor signed into law a data breach notification law.  It is the last state in the country to do so, closely trailing South Dakota.   Fifteen years ago, California was the first state to enact a data breach notification law.  The Alabama law applies to electronically stored “sensitive personally identifying…

Facebook is the subject of a recent media blitz due to the allegations that 50 million people had their information improperly disclosed to Cambridge Analytica, a data research firm that may have played a role in the 2016 election.

The premise of the allegations is that Cambridge Analytica sent out a personality test to roughly 270,000 of Facebook’s users, stating that it would use the test for academic purposes.  However, allegedly, Cambridge Analytica collected the personal information not only of those who replied to the survey, but also of all of those individuals’ Facebook “friends.”  By doing so, the 270,000 users extrapolated to 50 million users.
Continue Reading Facebook In Hot Water With Latest Privacy Missteps

Yesterday, South Dakota’s Governor signed into law “An Act to provide for the notification related to a breach of certain data and to provide a penalty therefor.”  Under the Act, when a “breach of system security” involves personal or protected information, the holder of the information must notify affected residents within 60 days and, if…

The Equifax data breach saga continues, this time with civil and criminal charges for insider trading lodged against Jun Ying, Equifax’s former Chief Information Officer of its U.S. Information Solutions business unit. The criminal indictment pursued by federal prosecutors and the civil complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission both allege that Ying exercised…

Two courts. Two days.  Two different results.  On March 7, on remand from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, a federal district court judge in Minnesota granted a motion to dismiss a consumer class action suit involving a 2014 data breach affecting over 1,000 grocery stores.  The court found that the allegations of possible future identity theft or fraud because of the breach were not sufficient to establish a substantial risk of future harm.
Continue Reading The Standing Struggle in Data Breach Litigation Continues