Zappos and Amazon face consequences of data breach
When you are the lead artist of a security mishaps that ended up in a data breach affecting some 24 million people, consequences are bound to catch up with you. And they just have caught up with shoe retailer Zappos.com and the bigger online fish behind them, Amazon.com. The two companies are being sued by the customers affected by the data breach, being accused of negligence.
A woman from Texas seems to be the main promoter in this Kentucky lawsuit. She claims that she and millions of other customers were harmed by the exposure of their personal account information. Zappos and Amazon have not commented on the lawsuit as of earlier today.
The Zappos data breach was made public on Sunday when the company emailed employees and customers to let them know that names, phone numbers and email addresses of customers might have been accessed in a hacker attack. The same statement reassured them that credit card and payment information had not been stolen. Zappos also advised its customers to reset account passwords on their site and any other sites where similar passwords were being used.
The attorneys of the Texas woman are seeking class-action status on behalf of the 24 million affected customers, claiming the security breach was actually a violation of the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. The sum the lawsuit seeks has not been specified, but it is in the range of millions of dollars in compensatory and exemplary damages for emotional distress and loss of privacy. It also seeks to have Zappos court-ordered to pay for credit monitoring and identity theft insurance, plus periodic audits, for all those affected by the data breach.
