Oklahoma resident Ronald Allen was one of dozens of people who say their lives became more difficult in 2022 after customer data like names, email addresses, and birth dates was stolen from Samsung, the Korean electronics company.
After Allen was notified of the breach, he said, someone attempted to open an account in his name. A bank informed him his credit-card information had been found on the Dark Web, a part of the Internet where criminals often sell and buy personal information. Allen says he's since spent many hours on the phone cancelling accounts, disputing charges and changing his passwords. He says he spends a chunk of time every week checking his financial accounts for unauthorized activity, according to a multi-district legal complaint filed against Samsung.
The complaint alleged that a string of data breaches were indicative of lax security practices. But the effort to hold Samsung accountable has been unsuccessful. The customers did not prove that they had suffered specifically because of the data breach, District Judge Christine O'Hearn of New Jersey wrote in an opinion on Jan. 3. People's information is stolen all the time, O'Hearn reasoned, and there's no way to know that Allen or others had their identity compromised because of the data breach.
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