Privacy International has announced that it is planning legal action against a UK law firm for breaching the privacy of internet users after a security breach.
The information held by ACS:Law, a law firm that has been tracking internet users to pursue legal action for breach of copyright, includes vast amounts of information on thousands of internet users. While the full extent of this breach is not yet known, one report stated that among the stolen files is a single email containing the personal information of approximately 10,000 people assumed to have been involved in file-sharing of pornographic works, exposing their names, addresses, postcodes, and Internet protocol addresses. Other reports indicate that credit card details have also been made available.
According to Alexander Hanff, PI Advisor: "This data breach is likely to result in significant harm to tens of thousands of people in the form of fraud, identity theft and severe emotional distress."
"This firm collected this information by spying on internet users, and now it has placed thousands of innocent people at risk."
PI has briefed the Information Commissioner's Office and is preparing a complaint. PI is also accepting complaints directly from the public, and we urge anyone who is a victim of this breach to get in touch as soon as possible by emailing alex@privacy.org.
The leaks mainly involve customers of BT, Sky, Plusnet and BeThere(O2)
Customers of AOL, Talk-Talk and Tiscali are totally unaffected
The situation with Virgin is slightly more complicated as at one time they did hand over customer information to ACS:Law but have recently refused.
Update: At the time of writing BT/Plusnet have still not notified customers who are affected even though they have known about the security breech for two days now. Plusnet is desperately trying to distance itself from owners and masters BT by blaming the latter for the entire situation while maintaining the pretence of being a separate company.
