Social media app developer sued over privacy breach
Thursday, December 31, 2009
RockYou, a firm that creates applications for use on social media networks, was sued this week by an Indiana man who alleges that the developer failed to adequately safeguard his personally identifiable information.
A large-scale data breach was revealed earlier this month by RockYou. The lawsuit says that the company waited two weeks before informing the 32 million affected users that their privacy may have been breached. CNET says that RockYou has admitted that it stored private user data in an insecure database, and that the lawsuit claims the company "recklessly and knowingly failed to take even the most basic steps to protect its users' PII (personally identifiable information) by leaving the data entirely unencrypted and available for any person with a basic set of hacking skills to take the PII of at least 32 million customers."
PC World says that RockYou has publicly apologized and posted an explanation of the breach on its website. The company has also said that it will improve its security measures in the future.
Experts say that privacy on social media networks has long been problematic, and is likely to continue to be so in the future.
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