Zappos Enters Preliminary Settlement in 2012 Data Breach Lawsuit

• The agreement was approved on September 19 by the US District Court of Nevada.
• The data breach had affected the personal information of about 24 million customers.

Seven year old class-action lawsuit filed against Zappos is nearing its end as the firm has agreed to make a settlement over the 2012 data breach. The agreement was approved on September 19 by the U.S. District Court of Nevada.

What has been proposed?

• As a part of the proposed class-action lawsuit, Zappos users who had their data stolen in the 2012 incident will receive a 10 percent discount coupon to use on Zappos online store. The offered discount coupon has to be used by a customer within 60 days of distribution or by December 31, 2019.
• While the affected customers get a small compensation for the data breach, the lawyers, on the other hand, are set to receive $1,620,000 in attorneys' fees and other legal costs.

A recap of the breach

• In January 2012, the Amazon-owned online retailer Zappos had suffered a major data breach exposing the personal information of about 24 million of its customers.
• The incident had occurred after hackers breached Zappos servers and stole users' personal data.
• The compromised information included names, addresses, passwords, and the last four digits of the credit cards numbers, of customers.

Final approval still pending

The final settlement is scheduled for December 20, 2019. The preliminary settlement’s terms have been published on the class-action lawsuit website. According to court documents, lawyers will be emailing impacted customers to inform them about the settlement terms to which either they can accept or opt-out and file a new lawsuit.