Fraud from cyberattacks – legal right to compensation

You could be legally owed thousands of pounds in data breach compensation for fraud from cyberattacks, even if you have not lost any money at all.

The law is on your side, and you could be entitled to claim thousands of pounds in damages for any distress caused as a result of fraud, or the threat of fraud, from an attack. As a leading firm of data law experts, we can represent you for a case, and we may be able to do so on a No Win, No Fee basis.

Read on for more advice.

Can you claim compensation for fraud from cyberattacks?

The GDPR can entitle a victim to be able to claim data breach compensation if they have experienced fraud from cyberattacks. It is your legal right to use the laws in place, and we are here as expert lawyers to support you in your case.

We represent thousands of clients for cases on a No Win, No Fee basis. If you talk to our team today and we think that you have a case that could succeed, we may be able to represent you for a legal case on the basis that we can write off our legal fees if the case does not win – subject to the terms and conditions, which we always have to say (of course!)

Contact the team here for free, no-obligation advice now.

What could you claim for?

There are usually two key elements to any data breach compensation case, and these also apply when pursuing a legal claim for fraud from cyberattacks.

If you lose any money as a result of fraud or theft, you can be entitled to recover compensation to cover the amount that you have lost or had stolen. If you have paid out for any expenses, like better security or reports for looking into your full credit file, these could also be covered.

However, what about if you have not lost any money or paid anything out? What happens if any money stolen has already been returned: can you still claim then?

In short, the answer is that you could still be eligible to receive compensation.

The GDPR can also allow a victim to claim compensation for any distress caused by the loss of control of personal information. It can be incredibly distressing to know that hackers and criminals have access to our personal and private information, and this distress can be worse when actual fraud or theft has occurred; even if money has been returned or refunded. Even the threat of it possibly happening is incredibly worrying, and this is something that you can still be eligible to claim for.

Data breach compensation amounts can be based on the extent and severity of any distress and suffering endured. In some cases, this can mean pay-outs in the thousands or tens of thousands of pounds area.

Real examples

Fraud from cyberattacks has been prevalent in a number of high-profile data breaches that we represent clients for. This includes:

• British Airways: we are on the Steering Committee for this action, and a number of our clients have reported fraudulent transactions having had their information exposed in this monumental breach;
• TalkTalk: where some victims were contacted by scammers posing as TalkTalk who used real account data, likely stolen in the attack, to pass themselves off as the real deal. Some victims we supported lost thousands of pounds having been scammed by professional criminals;
• easyJet: it has been reported that some of the 9 million victims of the attack have experienced fraud and theft. We are also representing clients in this action also.

Further, recent research from Which? suggested that more than half of people whose data has been stolen by hackers go on to become victims of fraud.

It is clear that the risks are real, but victims do not have to suffer in silence. For free, no-obligation advice about your options for justice, please don’t hesitate to contact the team today.

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