Customers from Oregon, California, and Washington to Louisiana, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have filed would-be class actions in federal courts, alleging Target was negligent and did not protect their credit card information arising out of a security breach that began just before Black Friday.
A second type of class-action lawsuit has now been filed related to the major security breach at Target stores that began on or around Nov. 27 and continued through at least Dec. 15, which allowed hackers access to customers’ credit and debit card information.
It is estimated that more than 40 million accounts were compromised. The latest type of class-action lawsuit was filed Dec. 30 by the Alabama State Employees Credit Union on behalf of financial institutions against defendant Target Corporation.
The class-action lawsuit seeks compensation for financial losses resulting from defrauded deposits of financial institution members and customers, as well as costs associated with closing accounts, reissuing new checks, debit cards and credit cards as a result of Target’s data breach.
Target publicly announced Dec. 20, 2013, that it had been hit by a wide-reaching security breach that compromised millions of card holder accounts. The retailer reported the hackers had access to credit and debit card holders’ names, card numbers and the three-digit security number on the card. On Dec. 27, 2013, Target admitted that it had confirmed that encrypted personal identification numbers (PINs) also were stolen.
The lawsuit on behalf of the financial institutions was filed in the United States District Court, Middle District of Alabama, Northern Division.
