At least five Utahns are suing Equifax, Inc. for $5 billion after a massive data breach recently gave hackers access to the private information of more than 40 percent of Americans.
In a class-action lawsuit filed in Utah’s U.S. District Court on Monday, plaintiffs say the company was aware of a data breach that occurred in July but didn’t make the information public until Thursday, when Equifax announced that as many as 143 million accounts had been “compromised by unauthorized persons,” according to the lawsuit.
People’s names, addresses, Social Security numbers, driver license information and more were exposed during the breach, and Equifax did not implement adequate security measures required by law to safeguard all of that information, the lawsuit says, leaving consumers open to identity theft.