23andMe frantically changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing
23andMe frantically changed its terms of service to prevent hacked customers from suing
In an email sent to customers earlier this week viewed by Engadget, the company announced that it had made updates to the “Dispute Resolution and Arbitration section” of its terms of service that would prevent customers from filing class action lawsuits.
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it should be noted no contract can bar seeking legal remedy... It's like trying to bring an NDA to force when someone goes to the cops.
I just learned this the hard way. I just got laid off and rejected the severance check because in order to get it, we had to sign a thing that said we waived our right to ever sue them for anything
Edit: added Axios link, removed double quote for Axios paragraphs
Forbidding people from filing class action lawsuit, as Axios notes, hides information about the proceedings from the public since affected parties typically attempt to resolve disputes with arbitrators in private. Experts, such as Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Nancy Kim, an online contractor expert, told Axios that changing its terms wouldn’t be enough to protect 23andMe in court.
https://www.axios.com/2023/12/07/23andme-terms-of-service-update-data-breach
The company did not publicly reveal the full extent of the breach until around two months after it occurred.
The latest: At least two law firms are pursuing a class action against 23andMe.
Canada-based law firms YLaw and KND Complex Litigation have proposed a class-action lawsuit against the company in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
Of note: In emails notifying customers of the terms of service change, the company has said people are able to opt out if they email "legal@23andme.com" within 30 days of receiving the notice.
However, the updated terms of service requires customers to email a different address, "arbitrationoptout@23andme.com."
Trump: they can do that?!?
This "hack" is being blown way out of proportion. No 23andme systems were compromised, a bunch of customer accounts were accessed using reused passwords found in password leaks from other sites. I think the only real change 23andme could implement here would be to enforce 2fa across all accounts, but they're certainly not alone in that.
Except that's not true. Somehow, 23andme missed the almost certainly anomalous activity on thier network that lead to the extraction of 6.9 million users' data. Missing the activity associated with the massive data dump, designing thier system to allow for that? 100% thier fault.
One should not be able to use a set of hacked accounts to dump that much data. That's a design flaw.
As someone in that data breach (not from reused passwords) and of Jewish descent (the seeming target of the hack), I'm going to say it is not blown out of proportion. They previously had no limits on failed login attempts which is pathetic from a security standpoint. They still don't require 2FA. They say they courage it but it's not like they bug you about it.
So they failed at multiple points prior to the hack and still fail after. They do have a limit on failed logins now so they have done part off the base level of security.