Welcome To The Data Leak Lawyers Blog

How scammers used Facebook’s phone number and email address search facility

Facebook has been all over the news lately over the data breach scandal involving data being skimmed by Cambridge Analytica. Since news first broke of the scandal, Facebook has been under heavy fire over their data privacy policies, as well as how they use people’s data and how it is shared.

In the latest, it can now be assumed that every Facebook user has had their data improperly shared. But, another issue is the questionable Facebook phone number search facility that has, reportedly, been used by scammers who are abusing the facility for their own gain.

Read on to find out how.
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When employees steal data to engage in personal contact with customers…

There is a very worrying trend of employees stealing data from their workplaces in order to engage personal contact with a customer. More often than not, it is an employee stealing a customer’s mobile phone number and then contacting the customer to “make friends” or try and pursue a romantic interest in the victim.

Clearly, this is wrong.

How will this worrying trend be stopped, and what can victims do if they are contacted by people who have stolen their contact information from a workplace?
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Wigan Council at centre of alarming number of data protection breaches

According to data gleaned from a Freedom of Information request, as reported by Wigan Today, there have been a concerning number of data breaches involving Wigan Council where information of a confidential, sensitive, or protected nature has been accessed or disclosed “in an unauthorised fashion”.

Councils and private companies who local authority agencies outsource work to are high on the list when it comes to data protection breaches, and we advise and represent a large number of people claiming for data protection compensation as a result of a council data breach.

Unfortunately, this news does not come as a surprise to us.
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Serious risk facing Equifax breach victims from scammers and fraudsters!

There is a wealth of information already out there in the public domain about most people. From loads of information accessible by anyone on social media platforms, to the data we share with organisations who may then be passing it around (whether we’re aware or not), there is so much out there.

So, when we have a serious data protection breach like the Equifax hack, the risk for victims is massive. It’s not hard for scammers and fraudsters to be able to find more information online about the Equifax breach victims, meaning the risks are very hard to manage.
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Octoly data leak exposes private information of 12,000 celebrities and influencers

Social media and data protection is a hot topic right now with the Facebook & Cambridge Analytica issue still fresh in our minds.

But this isn’t the only large-scale social media breach of late.

The private data of more than 12,000 prominent “social media influencers”, like celebrities, has reportedly been exposed by a marketing firm who pair stars with top brands for things like product endorsements and reviews.
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Compensation claim launched against Lovense app over allegations of secretly collecting intimate usage data

We have blogged about this before, but here is an update about a case that has been launched. As a reminder, we are acting for a large number of people claiming for the We-Vibe data breach scandal when it was discovered that the sex-toy software was secretly collecting information about the use of the product that they were not entitled to. Not only that, but hackers were reportedly able to break into the associated app and essentially “control” the device.

Now, there is a new legal case for a different remote sex-toy that is allegedly collecting user data secretly as well. According to papers already filed in a legal case, Lovense, a division of Hong Kong-based Hytto Ltd, is collecting and recording the intimate data of the users of their products.
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Is council data protection and cybersecurity quality a postcode lottery?

Experts have looked in to the differences between councils and local authority services and compared the quality of the cybersecurity and their data protection procedures and protocols. One worrying trend is the fact that there are some huge differences between different councils when it comes to practically all aspects of data security.

This issue means that, in reality, the quality of data protection and cybersecurity can be somewhat of a postcode lottery. There is no single or uniform approach, which is a really worrying aspect.
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Equifax data breach compensation success

It’s pleasing to see that some consumers have already had their cases heard and have been able to receive successful verdicts against the credit-referencing agency at the heart of last year’s huge data protection scandal.

Although Equifax reportedly turned up to court with some very expensive lawyers, a group of claimants managed to convince a judge that they had a case to answer for. This has all happened in America, where cases can often get to a trial much faster than they can here in the UK, but the news can be seen as potentially good news here as well.
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Researchers say catastrophic data breach is inevitable by 2021

According to researchers at the Raytheon and the Ponemon Institute, a staggering 80% of IT and cybersecurity experts believe we may be headed for a data breach of “catastrophic” proportions in the next few years.

The combination of more and more devices connected to the internet, together with the increasing risk of cyberattacks, as well as the growing sophistication of the attacks we’re seeing, is allowing cyber-hackers the perfect platform to do some real damage.

On top of this, with organisations still not taking their cybersecurity responsibilities seriously enough, unless things change, we could be headed for disaster very soon.
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Travel site Orbitz hit by probable cyber-attack: 880k credit card data at risk

There’s been yet another major data protection breach, this time involving Obitz – a subsidiary of Expedia Inc – who say that the data of some 880,000 accounts may have been compromised in a cyber-hack.

Earlier this month, travel site Orbitz determined that an attacker may have accessed data stored on a computer system used by consumers, and accessed a separate tool used by businesses. It’s believed that data submitted in 2016 was exposed, but the discovery of the breach only happened in March this year, meaning data may have been exposed for a prolonged period of time
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