Recently, Austrian privacy activist Maximilian Schrems won a partial victory in his continuing battles with Facebook. We discuss that case below. But first, we review his prior tilts with Facebook.
Schrems in Ireland’s Courts
When Schrems was a college student, he heard a Facebook representative at a conference talk about European privacy rules with a lack of consideration that shocked him. Since then, Schrems has been fighting Facebook on many fronts.… More
Data breaches are often followed by class action suits in which the affected individuals seek damages. Corporations defending against such suits have used a 2013 Supreme Court case, Clapper v. Amnesty International, 133 S. Ct. 1138 (2013), to fight off such claims. In Clapper, the Supreme Court held that, in order for a plaintiff who alleges future harm to have the necessary Article III standing to sue in federal court,… More
On January 21, 2014, U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia issued a 97 page orderthat dismissed the majority of the claims in a putative class action against various Sony entities, claims relating to the 2011 hack into the computer network system that Sony used to provide online gaming and Internet connectivity through PSP handhelds and PS3 game consoles.
According to Judge Battaglia, “The fifty-one claims alleged in the FACC can be categorized into nine sub-groups: (1) negligence;… More
Now that the initial media blitz about the massive Target breach has passed, it is time to look ahead at the implications:
In a recent decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) determined that customer ZIP Codes are “personal identification information” that retailers are prohibited from collecting during credit card transactions. With this decision, the Massachusetts high court may have set off a wave of new class-action lawsuits against retailers that collected customer ZIP Codes. Especially vulnerable are those retailers that collected customer ZIP Codes and used them to send unwanted marketing materials or sold the ZIP Codes or information derived from them to third parties. … More
Blizzard—maker of the video games Diablo III and World of Warcraft—was sued last week in California over its two-factor authentication service. The complaint seeks class action status.
The concept of two-factor authentication should be familiar to anyone that has used RSA SecurID. When logging into an online service, users enter both a password and a single-use authentication code. Blizzard offers its customers the option of using authentication codes when logging into its Battle.net service. … More
On May 5, a consumer class action was filed against Sony, relating to the data breaches in its Sony PlayStation and related services. The complaint alleges negligence, invasion of privacy and misappropriation of confidential financial information, as well as breach of express and implied contract. No specific damages were alleged. More