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Judge blocks Yahoo data breach payout
A judge has rejected Yahoo's attempt to draw a line under a series of breaches it experienced between 2013 and 2016. The firm had proposed a payout to lawyers acting on behalf of affected US and Israeli users. But while the deal said the attorneys could claim up to $37.5m (£28.5m) in fees and costs, it did not disclose the sum reserved for victims. The California judge also objected to Yahoo being too vague about what remedial steps it was taking.
Details of the ruling were first reported by the Courthouse News Service, which has also published the decision in full.
Judge Lucy Koh has form in dealing with contentious cases involving tech giants. She previously oversaw a high-profile patent dispute between Apple and Samsung, and has also presided over headline-making cases involving YouTube, Qualcomm and Tesla.
The Yahoo class action lawsuit specifically covers three data breaches that affected the web portal's users' personal information:
- a 2013 event in which hackers were able to access all 3 billion Yahoo accounts
- a 2014 attack, which the firm said had affected more than 500 million accounts
- a breach that happened between 2015-16, in which the plaintiffs allege that the data stolen in 2014 was used to gain access to specific user accounts
The lawyers pursuing the case noted that Yahoo had repeatedly delayed notifying the public of the incidents until some time after it had become aware of them.
In one instance, the business acknowledged it had paid for data from millions of its hacked accounts that had been advertised on the dark web, but disputed claims that it had failed to prevent the information being purchased by others. Among the evidence presented to the court was a report submitted by the plaintiffs that alleged there had been further breaches dating back to 2008 involving "several million accounts", which Judge Koh noted that Yahoo continued to deny.
[...] The judge first expressed reservations about the settlement at a hearing in November, when she complained that she had been unable to "figure out the total estimated sum" being promised.
And on Monday, she formally rejected the deal.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday February 03 2019, @11:19PM
That sounds right to me.
They also provided email services to ISP's from all over the world, including the one I use.
As soon as the really big breach was made public my ISP bought email back inhouse, and began their own legal action against Yahoo!
I have no idea how this ruling might affect that case, but I did hear the CEO of my ISP on the radio last year say something along the lines of "it will have no financial consequences for (ISP), so I assume the costs will be paid for by Verizon, or whatever Yahoo! has mutated into.