BetMGM Data Breach Customer Information Exposure Class Action

BetMGM, LLC is a sports betting and igaming operator formed by MGM Resorts and Entain Holdings that claims to be “revolutionizing sports betting and online gaming in the United States.” Unfortunately, the complaint for this class action alleges that the company did not take adequate steps to protect the personally identifying information (PII) that it held in its systems, leading to a data breach which it announced in December 2022.

The class for this action is all persons in the US whose PII was exposed in the Data Breach.

The complaint faults BetMGM for, among other things, “intentionally, willfully, recklessly, or negligently failing to take adequate and reasonable measures to ensure its data systems were protected against unauthorized intrusions” and “failing to take standard and reasonably available steps to prevent the Data Breach[.]”

BetMGM sent out an email notice letter, beginning on or about December 21, 2022, the complaint alleges, telling individual victims that their information had been compromised. The data breach had taken place quite a while before, the complaint claims, in May of that year, but had not been discovered until November 28, 2022.

The complaint quotes the notice email as saying that “certain BetMGM patron records were obtained in an unauthorized manner. We believe that your information was contained in these records” but as not specifying exactly what information was stolen. The complaint claims that BetMGM “acknowledged that it took an unreasonable six months just to discover the Data Breach, never mind notifying impacted customers.”

The exact information stolen varies according to the customer, but the notice says it “may have included” names, dates of birth, information about transactions with BetMGM, and hashed Social Security numbers. Hashed data, the complaint explains, is data to which a formula has been applied to change it to a different value. However, hashes can be broken to recover the original numbers.

By collecting, using, and obtaining a benefit from its customers’ PII, the complaint alleges, BetMGM knew or should have known that it had a responsibility to protect that private information and keep it from exposure.

The stolen information can now be sold on the dark web, for thieves and fraudsters to use. The victims now have new and unnecessary burdens and expenses, the complaint claims, in trying to protect their bank and financial accounts, monitor their credit reports, and take other steps to protect themselves from fraud and identity theft.

“According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2019 Internet Crime Report,” the complaint claims, “Internet-enabled crimes reached their highest number of complaints and dollar losses in 2019, resulting in more than $3.5 billion in losses to individuals and business victims.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: Exposing Private Information, Exposure to cyber crime, Your Privacy