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On Monday, Digital Music News was first to report that Warner Music Group (WMG) was facing a class-action lawsuit over the months-long hack that affected many of its e-commerce websites. Now, the Big Three record label has been named in an additional class-action complaint.
DMN obtained an exclusive copy of the just-filed lawsuit, which plaintiffs Christie Kuhn and Susak Cakl just recently submitted to a New York federal court. To briefly recap the hack at the center of both legal actions, Warner Music Group revealed about ten days back that an unauthorized third party (or parties) had gained access to customers’ personal and financial information on “a number of e-commerce websites” under its watch.
The as-yet-unidentified culprit(s) accessed the sensitive data across a more than three-month-long window, spanning specifically from April 25th until August 5th. It’s unclear exactly how many identities and payment cards the crook (or crooks) lifted during the stunning breach. However, the latest class-action complaint’s plaintiffs – like the plaintiffs in the aforementioned suit – reported unapproved charges on the same credit and debit cards that they used on Warner Music sites.
After reiterating the extensive hack’s circumstances and the distinct possibility that criminals might sell the financial specifics on the dark web, Cakl and Kuhn’s 20-page-long filing describes their experiences following the episode.
Kuhn noticed on her September debit-card statement – not via a notification from her financial institution – that “more than five hundred dollars” had been charged in her name. The amount of Cakl’s potentially hack-related expense wasn’t disclosed, though one of the individuals from the other class-action complaint suffered a nearly $200 charge.
Moreover, the previous class-action lawsuit elaborated upon the possible nature of the hack, specifying that the responsible person or persons may not have compromised the websites’ servers or networks, but could instead have uploaded “malicious codes.” These apparently difficult-to-detect assets might have then lifted customers’ financial info amid the checkout process. WMG is working with law enforcement to determine who committed the crime, but company officials haven’t yet provided a public update on the investigation’s progress.
Warner Music Group shares closed today at $27.64 apiece – marking a three percent drop from yesterday’s close ($28.53) and WMG’s lowest per-share closing price since returning to the public market in June. It’s impossible to say how much of the dip is attributable to these class-action suits, but moving forward, it’ll be worth following the cases’ progress and Warner Music’s stock value.
More as this develops.
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