On Friday, U.S. District Judge James Selna sent a lawsuit against Experian, Court Ventures, and InfoSearch back to Orange County Superior Court, denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss outright.
The case is Patton v. Experian, and I blogged about it when it was first filed last year. I’ve also blogged, in the past, about how outrageous it was that no one was notifying consumers whose identity information had been compromised because Experian, Court Ventures, and InfoSearch were all pointing fingers at each other and saying they didn’t have complete enough information to make notifications. So one year after the lawsuit seeking an injunction to compel notification was filed, and more than two years after the breach was first disclosed, individuals whose data were accessed by criminals have still not been individually notified, it seems.
Why, oh why, the FTC didn’t go after Experian over this incident – and InfoSearch – and Court Ventures – is beyond me, as this was a horrific breach, and I had already brought to the FTC’s attention numerous other data security breaches involving Experian.
If the FTC wants to really protect consumers, it should have gone after Experian and not just punted or hoped the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would do something. Their failure to take action over this horrific breach that was not only likely to cause substantial injury to consumers, but did cause substantial injury to consumers, may be, in my opinion, one of their greatest failures in FTC’s Section 5 enforcement history.
And what have state Attorneys General that were reportedly investigating this incident done?
Will anyone ever actually do something and smack down responsible parties in a way that sends a clear message that if you are making money trafficking in personal information, you’d damn well better be able to notify individuals in the event of a breach?