FILE - A Social Security card is displayed on Oct. 12, 2021, in Tigard, Ore. About 71 million people including retirees, disabled people and children receive Social Security benefits.
According to the suit filed in the Southern District of Florida, plaintiff Christopher Hoffman, a California resident, received a notification from an identity theft protection service in late July that his personal data had been compromised and found on the Dark Web because of a breach of the Florida-based background check company National Public Data by the cybercriminal group USDoD.
The lawsuit, which was filed earlier this month, claimed the data was unencrypted and “compromised, published, and then sold on the Dark Web, due to Defendant's negligent and/or careless acts and omissions and their utter failure to protect customers’ sensitive data.
"Third-party breach notification services like McAfee are in the process right now of going through the data and notifying impacted consumers," Grobman said. "If any organization out there is aware that it had their data breached, taking responsibility to inform impacted consumers is really important and from what we're seeing on this one, it doesn't appear that that happened.