Washington State AG Sues Uber Over Data Breach

More legal woes for Uber: Washington State’s attorney general has sued the ride-sharing company, alleging it had violated the state’s data breach notification law.

The lawsuit is the result of a massive data breach that Uber suffered in October 2016, when hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers. Even worse: It took the company more than a year to disclose the breach, and its chief security officer hid the cyberattack and paid hackers $100,000 to delete the stolen information.

According to news from Reuters, Washington State’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Uber, alleging that the names and drivers’ license numbers of at least 10,888 Uber drivers in the state had been stolen without their being notified as state law requires.

This is just the latest lawsuit the ride sharing company faces after revealing the breach. Uber is now facing at least three potential class-action lawsuits, and is also under investigation by the attorneys general of New York, Missouri, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Illinois.

In response to the investigations, an Uber spokesman said in a statement, “We’ve been in touch with several attorney general offices and the [Federal Trade Commission] to discuss this issue, and we stand ready to cooperate with them going forward.”

The breach has even gone international, with Mexico’s National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data investigating how many of the country’s citizens had been affected, as well as the steps Uber would take to control the damage and prevent future breaches.

In addition, a recent report says that Japan’s SoftBank is officially offering to purchase shares of the firm at a $48 billion valuation – a 30 percent discount off of Uber’s most recent valuation of $68.5 billion.