A lawsuit has been filed against Fidelity Investments after the company disclosed a major data breach affecting over 77,000 customers, according to a ThinkAdvisor report.
Two Fidelity customers, Yaakov and Seth Gluck of Spring Valley, New York, filed a proposed class-action suit last week in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. They allege negligence and invasion of privacy.
The company disclosed the breach recently in regulatory filings with the attorney generals of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. According to the disclosure, sensitive personal information of over 77,000 customers was compromised, including Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, and other data.
The breach was carried out by a third party using two newly established customer accounts. It took place between August 17–19, with Fidelity becoming aware of the activity on Aug. 19, according to a company spokesperson. Fidelity stopped access to the third party who had breached the accounts on Aug. 19th, and subsequently launched an investigation with assistance from external security experts.
The lawsuit by the Glucks alleges that due to the breach, their Social Security numbers, financial information, names, numbers and addresses were stolen.
They assert that Fidelity’s “failure to protect the breach victims’ personal information, cyber criminals were able to steal everything they could possibly need to commit nearly every conceivable form of identity theft and wreak havoc on the financial and personal lives of potentially millions of individuals.”
Furthermore, the lawsuit says, Fidelity harmed the plaintiffs by “failing to implement adequate and reasonable measures to ensure their computer systems were protected,” and by failing to take adequate steps to prevent and stop the breach, to timely detect it and to honor promises to protect clients’ personal information.
The lawsuit seeks various damages and injunctive relief. A Fidelity representative did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
“We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took steps to terminate the access,” Fidelity said in a letter giving notice to its impacted customers. The firm emphasized that no Fidelity customer accounts were accessed as part of the incident.
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