Linkedin Password Theft Results In Class Action Lawsuit

Nearly as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning, the recent theft of 6.5 million LinkedIn user passwords has resulted in the filing of a class action lawsuit in a California federal court. In her complaint, a LinkedIn premium subscriber asserts claims on behalf of all LinkedIn users for breach of implied and express contractual obligations, negligence and violation of California's Unfair Competition Law, Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200.

Although the attack affected the passwords of just over 5% of LinkedIn's approximately 120 million users, plaintiff purports to assert claims on behalf of all LinkedIn users. Although plaintiff alleges classwide damages in excess of $5,000,000 (the jurisdictional threshold for federal court jurisdiction over the state law claims advanced in the complaint) it is unclear what damages plaintiff alleges that the class actually sustained by reason of merely losing passwords. Some commentators have hypothesized that the...