RockYou Proposed Settlement Would Leave Decision Standing

By Craig A. Hoffman on November 21, 2011 Posted in Data Breaches, Privacy Litigation

The parties in the Claridge v. RockYou case submitted a proposed settlement agreement to the court for approval on November 14, 2011. This case, which was filed shortly after RockYou disclosed a breach that compromised 32 million log-in credentials, received national attention in the spring. In April 2011, the California federal district court declined to … Continue Reading

Does the First Circuit’s Decision in Hannaford Signal a Changing Tide?

By Theodore J. Kobus III on October 24, 2011 Posted in Data Breaches, Payment Card Industry

Until last week, most of us thought that the Hannaford Brothers data breach litigation was just another example of how Plaintiffs are not able to recover in class action lawsuits without proof of actual harm. The Hannaford Brothers supermarket chain suffered a data breach between December, 2007 and March, 2008 where hackers accessed over 4M … Continue Reading

Loss of Personal Information in Security Breach Results in Loss of Some “Unidentified Value”

By Craig A. Hoffman on April 20, 2011 Posted in Data Breaches, Online Privacy, Privacy Litigation

A December 2009 SQL injection attack against social network application maker RockYou.com’s database resulted in the breach of 32 million log-in credentials ( e-mail address and password). Not only did RockYou.com store the log-in credentials of its users in plain text, it also stored those user’s log-in credentials for social networking sites like Facebook and … Continue Reading