Tag Archive for: class

Ashley Madison hauled to court in class action suits over data breach

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Legal pressure on Ashley Madison and its parent company is picking up with more class-action lawsuits filed this week in the U.S. against the extramarital hookup site, alleging its negligence in protecting confidential user data.

Suits filed in federal courts in California and Texas by people using John Doe as a pseudonym, claim for damages, alleging that Avid Life Media, the parent company based in Toronto, did not have adequate and reasonable measures to secure the data of users from being compromised, and failed to notify users in time of the breach.

Avid Life Media said it had been made aware of an attack on its systems. Hacker group, Impact Team, released data last week that it claimed it had obtained from the website.

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Network World Security

Judge classifies as class action an email scanning lawsuit against Yahoo

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A lawsuit that alleges Yahoo’s email scanning practices are illegal can proceed as a class action complaint, a development that will shine the spotlight on the Yahoo Mail use of messages’ content for advertising purposes.

Plaintiffs allege that emails sent to Yahoo Mail users by people who do not have Yahoo Mail accounts are scanned by Yahoo in violation of federal and California wiretapping laws.

In a decision Tuesday evening, Judge Lucy Koh said all U.S. residents who are not Yahoo Mail subscribers but who have sent emails to or received emails from a Yahoo Mail subscriber between Oct. 2, 2011, and now may sue the company.

California residents who are not Yahoo Mail subscribers but who have sent emails to or received emails from a Yahoo Mail subscriber between Oct. 2, 2012, and now may sue the company, according to the judge’s filing in the U.S. district court in the northern district of California.

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Network World Security

Patent issued for filming a yoga class

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The patent issued to an outfit called YogaGlo covers methods – a term used loosely here – for filming a yoga class and transmitting those images over the Internet.

The patent is so mindbogglingly ridiculous that two things have happened: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has bestowed upon it the organization’s “Stupid Patent of the Month” award; and, remarkably, the patent holder a few days ago announced that it has “decided to forfeit the issued patent.” (Read the announcement though and it’s clear YogaGlo hasn’t given up on the patent hunt altogether.)

As the EFF notes, the fact that YogaGlo says it will renounce the patent doesn’t make this tale any less instructive in terms of demonstrating the extent to which this country’s patent system is broken.

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Network World Paul McNamara

Facebook given 4 weeks to respond to “largest privacy class action in Europe”

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Austrian law student Max Schrems has won the first round in his class action lawsuit against Facebook over online privacy. Schrems and others are seeking damages of €500 each ($ 664/£400) for alleged data violations by Facebook.
Naked Security – Sophos