John,
By now you’ve probably heard that Capital One lost the sensitive information of over 100 million people in a major data breach, one of the largest breaches ever. But did you know that you can’t sue Capital One, even if this breach results in personal and financial damages?
Enough is enough. Contact Congress now to demand strong protections, like the right to sue companies that violate your privacy and cause you personal and financial harm.
CONTACT CONGRESS
These breaches will continue to happen, endangering the personal and financial stability of everyday people, until Congress passes strong privacy protections. If you haven’t been personally compromised by a data breach yet, it’s only a matter of time.
Here’s what happened: according to researchers, Capital One failed to properly secure confidential data that they stored on Amazon cloud servers.1 A hacker then targeted the improperly secured instance and successfully breached it, walking away with the ultra-sensitive information of 100 million+ people. The bank and tech giant have been boasting about their partnership since 2015 claiming it would transform “security, reliability, and broad functionality,” even though many experts question the basic security of Amazon cloud servers.2, 3
Data breaches like this one often happen as a result of corporate negligence. But it’s everyday people like you and me who bear the burden of repairing damage and harm caused to our personal and financial lives. What’s worse—individuals impacted from such attacks have no right to sue the companies that betray their privacy and security, even when the companies themselves bear responsibility for stolen data.4
Contact Congress now to demand the right to sue companies that violate your privacy.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is supposed to be looking out for consumers when things like this happen, but the federal agency has been asleep at the wheel (by design) for decades. A recent report by Public Citizen found that “a whopping 75% of FTC officials have revolving door conflicts” with the industries they are tasked to oversee.5 Just consider the Equifax breach that impacted nearly all of the U.S. adult population. The company should have never survived the breach, their negligence and greed from the incident is well-documented, and now consumers will barely receive ANY compensation despite a $700 million fine levied by the FTC on Equifax.6 The status quo makes NO SENSE.
Want to know who to blame? Blame Congress. They’ve been taking huge amounts of money from the technology and banking industries and refusing to do anything meaningful to protect people's privacy and security. In fact, Congress has gutted key privacy protections.7
We can’t sit idly by and accept a world without privacy. We have to demand change from federal lawmakers, and they need to know that we’re paying attention. Especially when massive data breaches surface.
Now is the time to act. Click here to contact Congress and demand strong privacy protections like the right to sue companies that violate your privacy.
Thanks for all you do,
Laila at FFTF
Footnotes:
1. Krebson Security: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/07/capital-one-data-theft-impacts-106m-people/
2. Business Wire: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161129006308/en/Capital-Selects-AWS-Predominant-Cloud-Infrastructure-Provider
3. A Cloud Guru: https://read.acloud.guru/how-to-secure-an-s3-bucket-7e2dbd34e81b
4. Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy
5. Public Citizen: https://www.citizen.org/news/a-whopping-75-of-ftc-officials-have-revolving-door-conflicts-with-tech-corporations-and-other-industries/
6. The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/31/20748981/ftc-equifax-settlement-payout-125-dollars
7. U.S. News and World Report: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2017-03-31/congress-vote-to-repeal-fcc-broadband-privacy-rules-sells-out-consumers
Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.
