Approximately 24 million Zappos customers received an email from the company stating that the security surrounding their accounts had been breached. Hackers allegedly swept in and stole personal information from potentially hundreds of thousands of users, including names, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, passwords and the last four digits of stored credit card information.
While we frequently hear about accounts being hacked, the incident involving Zappos raises serious questions about the way that the company handled its nearly quarter of a billion customers.
One question many people who have previously purchased from the site are asking is:
“As a Zappos customer, do I have any recourse for having my personal information compromised?”
The answer is quite possibly, “Yes.”
The online shoe company is under scrutiny as its parent company, Amazon.com, was named in a recently-filed class-action lawsuit. Lawyers claim that Amazon.com supposedly violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by failing to adequately protect its customers’ personal information. The suit also alleges that the thieves were able to gain access to this information by hacking into Amazon/Zappos’ purportedly unprotected servers located in Shepherdsville, Kentucky.
Should a Zappos customer join the class-action suit, he or she may be entitled to the damages that are being asked for in the claim. Though unspecified, the damages that could be awarded would be to cover the cost of the following:
- Unencumbered use of the customers’ existing passwords and the loss of their passwords
- Expenses for credit monitoring
- Cost of identity theft insurance
- Out-of-pocket expenses
- Anxiety and emotional distress
- Loss of privacy
- Other economic and non-economic harm
The best way to determine if you should join the Amazon/Zappos class-action suit is to contact the Zappos lawsuit attorneys at Gray and White to schedule your complimentary case evaluation.