Following up on the “scam of the day” of July 13th which dealt with data breaches at Yahoo, LinkedIn and others, you should be aware of a class action that has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of all LinkedIn users.  According to the lawsui,t LinkedIn violated its own user agreement as well as industry standards by not fully encrypting its users’ personal information and by failing to store that information on separate servers from users’ passwords.  Additional allegations of lax security were also made.  I will keep you informed as to the progress of this class action.

TIPS

Don’t merely depend on the companies with which you do business to protect your personal information.  You should do the best you can to keep your information secure online.  Don’t store your credit card numbers on the websites of companies with which you do business online.  Put a credit freeze on your credit report to keep it safe even if a company with your information is hacked.  Don’t give out your Social Security number unless you absolutely must and use different and complex passwords for every company with which you do business online so that if one company is hacked, the identity thief does not have your password for everywhere else.