InfoBytes Blog
New York settles with online retailer over data breach
On June 6, the New York Attorney General announced a $65,000 settlement with an online retailer resolving allegations that the company failed to provide notice of an online data breach to over 39,000 customers, including nearly 3,000 New Yorkers, for over three years. According to the announcement, unauthorized parties placed malicious code designed to steal credit card information in the company’s software in September 2014. The company discovered the code in November 2014, but did not remediate it until January 2015 (or February 2015, after the code was mistakenly reintroduced and permanently deleted). The Attorney General alleges that the company did not notify its affected customers until May 2018, and that, because the company did not notify New York authorities or its affected customers “in an expedient time-period, and without unreasonable delay,” it violated New York’s General Business Law § 899-aa.
The company offered potentially affected customers two years of free credit monitoring, fraud consultation, and identity theft restoration services, which is not required by law. In addition to the penalty, the settlement requires the company to conduct trainings for appropriate employees and conduct thorough investigations of any future data security breaches involving private information to ensure compliance with state law.