Stratfor Hack Class Action Lawsuit Settlement
The Stratfor Hack Class Action Lawsuit Settlement is about data breach. Apparently Strategic Forecasting Inc was hacked into and the data of the clients were stolen. The company is also known as Stratfor. This is a subscription based publisher. The company basically publishes geopolitical analysis. The data gathering is intelligence based. The lawsuit was actually brought against the company by one of the clients. In fact, a lot of data was stolen, including those of famous and important people like Henry Kissinger, Dan Quayle, and Jim Woolsey. . The breach happened in December.
The hackers actually published the list of email addresses of the clients of the company together with their credit card numbers. Apparently one person in the US and men from Ireland and Britain have been responsible for this hack. You will be able to take part in the Stratfor Hack Class Action Lawsuit Settlement if you are a current subscriber or even a previous subscriber of Stratfor. You must have been a subscriber since December 24, 2011. What you will get if you take part is one month of free service. This actually amounts to $29.08. You will also get a book called The Blue Book. This book is published by the company and costs $12.99. The total amount of the settlement could be $1.75 million.
In addition to all these, the company will also have to pay for credit monitoring. You can request this if you want the service. The Court will appoint lawyers in this case. These lawyers are knows as the plaintiff’s attorneys. These lawyers will be paid a $400,000 lump sum payment. The money will of course come from the settlement funds. The Final Approval hearing has been set for September 28.
In order to take part in the settlement and to get the compensation mentioned above, you will usually have to submit a claim form. In rare instances you will not have to. We do not yet know if you will need to do submit a claim form. Once more details are known, you will find out for sure what you will have to do.
There have many data breach class action lawsuit settlements. One that I remember is the University of Hawaii Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit Settlement. About 96,000 students, faculty and staff were the victims of that data breach. The most recent is the LinkedIn one. In fact LinkedIn has been sued for $5 million. There have been many other cases.
I guess with so much at stake in putting your personal and private information online that you have to think about cyber security. These companies who collect these information and keep them online have to provide for the security of that information. I do not think that LinkedIn was too worried. However any personal information hacked into and displayed to the world can bring on a lawsuit. I am amazed that LinkedIn did not have better protection. That is definitely a cause for concern and now I am worried about all the information that I do have online. What is going to happen if that information is hacked into?
I am also amazed at how easily your password can be hacked. I guess this is because passwords are personal and people usually use numbers and words that are familiar and easy to remember. That is a huge mistake. But what is a safe password? With computer programs that can run through thousands of computations in a matter of seconds, even your more complicated 8 digit series of numbers, letter and special characters can be hacked into. That is why I understand why some people just refuse to put any information online.
However, the irony is that even if they do not put their information online, the company does. So it can still be hacked and their accounts breached. I do not as yet know what the solution can be. Even the best cyber security methods may not be safe. Or I should say may not be safe for long. Hackers love to hack into places that are strongholds just for the fun of it. So be very careful. Yes I am one of those people who do not believe that any information placed online is safe regardless of how secure that site is. So beware.
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