A Delaware federal judge on Friday denied Shopify‘s bid to pause a data breach lawsuit against it. According to Law360, the court said the stay will have no positive effect on the case that cost some crypto users their digital wallets. For those unversed, e-commerce platform Shopify along with Ledger, a hardware wallet maker have been accused by a group of Ledger users of failing to prevent a data breach in 2020.
Despite the repeated promises and worldwide advertising campaign touting unmatched security for its customers, Ledger—and its data processing vendors, Shopify and TaskUs—repeatedly and profoundly failed to protect its customers’ identities, causing targeted attacks on thousands of customers’ crypto-assets and causing Class members to receive far less security than they thought they had purchased with their Ledger Wallets.
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About The Data Breach Case
The suit filed in April 2022 in the United States District Court of Delaware makes serious allegations stating that Shopify “repeatedly and profoundly failed to protect its customers’ identities.” Complainants claim that Shopify and TaskUs, its third-party data consultant, are responsible for leaking Ledger buyers’ personally identifiable information (PII) despite the assurance of full security. The plaintiffs went on to claim that both the companies were aware of the breach and took over a week to notify customers. They want Ledger and Shopify to reveal the leaked information and a compensation covering actual and punitive damages.
France-based Ledger “initially denied that any compromise of PII had occurred,” but later backed down, said the complaint. The complaint states, “Despite the repeated promises and worldwide advertising campaign touting unmatched security for its customers, Ledger—and its data processing vendors, Shopify and TaskUs—repeatedly and profoundly failed to protect its customers’ identities, causing targeted attacks on thousands of customers’ crypto-assets and causing Class members to receive far less security than they thought they had purchased with their Ledger Wallets.”
Over A Million Affected
As per the allegations, as Ledger’s online store is built with the help of Shopify, the e-commerce giant had direct access to the PII of customers on Ledger’s database. Customer support services are provided by Shopify with the help of TaskUs, hence it also had access to customer data. Personal information of around 272,000 Ledger users and over a million email subscribers to their newsletter in 2020 was used by hackers. A huge phishing and intimidation campaign followed targeting Ledger owners, which also caused victims to lose crypto assets.
This is not the first time a class-action suit has been filed against both Shopify and Ledger related to data breach. A group of complainants filed a lawsuit in California in April 2021, making similar allegations. The complaint stated that Shopify and Ledger “negligently allowed, recklessly ignored, and then intentionally sought to cover up.”
