Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Samsung experienced a data breach back in late July and discovered the intrusion in early August.
- The company didn’t inform the 3,000 consumers who were impacted about the breach until September.
- A proposed class action accuses Samsung of not warning customers of the breach in a reasonable amount of time.
A recently filed class action accuses Samsung of failing to protect personal information after the company experienced a data breach in its US-based systems back in July.
According to Bloomberg, a complaint was filed to the US District Court for Nevada on September 6. The complaint claims that plaintiff Shelby Harmer and other affected customers weren’t notified soon enough after Samsung was hit with a cyberattack.
The incident mentioned in the proposed lawsuit occurred in late July 2022 when an unauthorized party managed to steal personal information from Samsung’s US systems including names, contact and demographic information, dates of birth, and product registration information. The tech giant claims that it found out about the breach on or around August 4 after conducting an investigation. However, the problem the complaint highlights is the fact that Samsung didn’t contact its affected customers until the following month.
Despite stating that it has taken action to secure its affected systems, is working with a “leading outside cybersecurity firm,” and is cooperating with law enforcement, Samsung still took about a month before warning its customers. According to the class action, this was more than enough time to disclose the breach, and the company’s decision to wait is tantamount to neglecting its duty as a collector of private information.
It can take anywhere from weeks to months before most companies discover a data breach. However, if Samsung did find out about the breach sometime around August 4, it’s difficult to discern why the company would wait until September to notify its customers.
