TORONTO, Oct. 1, 2018 /CNW/ - Charney Lawyers PC has commenced a national privacy breach class action arising from Facebook Inc. ("Facebook")'s announcement on September 28, 2018, that approximately 90 million user accounts worldwide may have been compromised in a massive security breach.
Facebook has confirmed that, during the breach, millions of user accounts were hacked via a series of vulnerabilities in Facebook's code relating to a video upload tool and the "View As" privacy tool. The hackers took advantage of these vulnerabilities to steal user access tokens and thus were able to "seize control" of affected user accounts. Although Facebook discovered the breach on September 25, 2018, the video upload tool has been available on Facebook since July 2017.
While the hackers had control of the breached user accounts, they had all of the powers the user had – i.e. they were able to post as the user, and to access all of the information that the users had uploaded to Facebook, as well as all of the information accessible to the users, including the private information of their friends which is not publicly available. Facebook has also confirmed that the hackers were able to gain control of accounts on other websites (such as Facebook-owned Instagram, e-commerce market Etsy or music streaming site Spotify) which permit users to log in using their Facebook account credentials.
This class action lawsuit is filed on behalf of all Canadians whose Facebook account credentials were stolen during the breach. The proposed representative plaintiff has had a personal Facebook user account since October 2007. He is also a regular user of Instagram, and he has used his Facebook account credentials to log into a number of other third-party websites.
"Facebook is the world's leading social media network. It generates billions of dollars in advertising revenue from users' account information and has a corresponding obligation to ensure that user account information is properly protected. We anticipate that a large number of Canadians have been affected by this breach," said Ted Charney of Charney Lawyers PC.
Charney Lawyers is a leading class action firm. Mr. Charney has been counsel in major privacy breach class actions and is a frequent lecturer and author on privacy law.
Facebook has announced that all affected users were logged out of their Facebook accounts, and will see a notification that they were affected by the breach when they log back in. All Canadians who were affected by the Facebook breach are encouraged to register to receive more information about the class action by emailing [email protected].
SOURCE Charney Lawyers
Remissa Hirji, Charney Lawyers PC, 416.964.7950 ext. 245, [email protected]; Tina Q. Yang, Charney Lawyers PC, 416.964.7950 ext. 249, [email protected]
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