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
Tag Archives: identify theft
Credit Card Replacement Costs and Identity Theft Insurance Are Compensable Damages for Data Breach
Late last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that victims of a data breach could pursue compensation from the merchant whose systems were breached for their costs of credit card replacement and identify theft insurance, under theories of breach of implied contract and negligence. See Anderson v. Hannaford Brothers Co., — F.3d —, 2011 WL 5007175 (1st Cir. Oct. 20, 2011).
As alleged by the plaintiffs in their class-action complaint,… More
FTC Attorney Conceded Identify Theft Can Happen to Anyone
I love this quote from a recent Wall Street Journal article:
“There’s no such thing as immunity to identity theft,” says David Lincicum, a staff attorney for the Federal Trade Commission’s division of privacy and identity protection.
It’s a dose of reality for us all — we need to plan for identify theft once it happens, not just plan to prevent it. More