Third Class Action Seeks to Hold Samsung Accountable for Data Breach

The third class-action fraud complaint in a little more than a week alleging Samsung failed to protect the sensitive and confidential personally identifiable information (PII) of millions of consumers was filed Monday (docket 3:22-cv-05723) in U.S. District Court in Trenton, New Jersey. All three complaints stem from Samsung’s Sept. 2 disclosure that hackers breached its network security and gained access to first and last names, dates of birth, postal addresses, geolocation data, email addresses and phone numbers. Hillsborough, New Jersey, resident Andrew Becker bought numerous Samsung devices and was notified in a Samsung email that his PII was compromised in the data breach, said his complaint. His bank notified Becker in early August that it had identified unusual activity on his account, and he was issued a new bank card, it said. “As a direct and proximate result of the breach,” Becker made “reasonable efforts to mitigate the impact” of the hack, it said. He’s “very concerned about identity theft as well as the consequences of such identity theft and fraud resulting from the data breach,” it said. As with the other lawsuits, Becker’s complaint asks the court to require Samsung to hire third-party auditors to better monitor the security of its networks. Samsung didn’t comment.