Tag: settlement

British Airways could reach a settlement over the 2018 data breach

7. July 2021

Back in 2018 British Airways was hit by a data breach affecting up to 500 000 data subjects – customers as well as British Airways staff.

Following the breach the UK’s Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has fined British Airways firstly in 2019 with a record fine of £183.000.000 (€ 205.000.000), due to the severe consequences of the breach. As reported beside inter alia e-mail addresses of the concerned data subjects also credit card information have been accessed by the hackers.

The initial record fine has been reduced by the ICO in 2020 after British Airways appealed against it. The ICO announced the final sanction in October 2020 –  £20.000.000 (€ 22.000.000). Reason for the reduction has been inter alia the current COVID-19 situation and it’s consequences for the Aviation industry.

Most recently it has been published that British Airways also came to a settlement in a UK breach class action with up to 16 000 claimants. The details of the settlement have been kept confidential, so that the settlement sum is not known, but the law firm, PGMBM, representing the claimants, as well as British Airways announced the settlement on July 6th.

PGMBM further explains, that the fine of the ICO “did not provide redress to those affected”, but that “the settlement now addresses” the consequences for the data subjects, as reported by the BBC.

Category: Cyber Security · Data Protection · General · UK
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Consequences of the 2017 Equifax Data Breach

16. April 2020

It has been almost two years since the consumer credit reporting agency Equifax suffered a massive Data Breach.

Back in May 2017 Equifax has been hacked, but the operators first noticed the breach much later, at the end of July 2017 and informed the public on the beginning of September 2017.

The disclosure of sensitive data from approximately 143 million, not only US based consumers, was to be feared (we reported).

After the breach Equifax invested $ 200 million on the data security infrastructure and found itself in the middle of class action suits.

Now, two years after the hack, Reuters reports the settlement of a lawsuit in connection with which Equifax pays $ 19.5 million to Indiana and also the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin reports a $ 1.5 million settlement between the city of Chicago and Equifax.

Besides Indiana also Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against Equifax, which is reported to be settled as well – the amount of the settlement is not yet known.

Category: General
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