Verizon Continues to Face Lawsuits over Yahoo Data Breach

Following their acquisition of Yahoo’s Internet services, Verizon is reportedly unable to rid itself of a number of lawsuits relating to a 2013 data breach.

The Consumerist reports that following Verizon’s purchase of Yahoo’s internet services division, the tech company is unable to dismiss a number of lawsuits brought against Yahoo by users affected by the 2013 Yahoo data breach.  Yahoo attempted to have the lawsuits dismissed claiming that the users could not prove that the data breach had harmed them in a specific manner. While the judge involved in the case agreed to dismiss part of the case, the Yahoo users’ lawsuits may still go ahead.

The plaintiffs in the case came from different states and countries, outlining the many different ways in which the leak of their Yahoo data has affected them. Some users that had banking information in their Yahoo accounts claimed that the breach of their account security led to bank and credit card fraud. Another plaintiff claimed that he continues to pay for commercial identity theft protection while another was the victim of IRS tax return identity theft.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh stated, “All plaintiffs have alleged a risk of future identity theft, in addition to loss of value of their personal identification information.” This is a major issue for Internet users in the digital age as their personal information could remain available on the net for some time.

It was noted by one of the plaintiff’s lawyers in an interview with Reuters that the Yahoo data breach was “the biggest data breach in the history of the world.” This claim may have led to Verizon receiving a significant discount in their acquisition of Yahoo’s online Internet services portion, but now Verizon must deal with the brunt of Yahoo’s legal problems.