Billion-Dollar Bank Facing Class Action Compliant After Data Breach Exposes Customers’ Names, Social Security Numbers and Other Sensitive Information

A US bank is facing a proposed class action lawsuit for allegedly failing to protect its customers’ sensitive personal information and suffering a massive data breach.

SouthState Bank, which has over $45 billion in assets, is being hit with a class action lawsuit led by plaintiff Latonya Gore in Florida, filings show.

The suit concerns a February 2024 data breach that compromised the banks’ clients’ full names, financial account numbers and Social Security numbers.

SouthState is accused of negligently failing to take adequate and reasonable measures to ensure its data systems were protected against unauthorized intrusions, failing to take standard and reasonably available steps to prevent the breach and failing to provide its customers prompt and accurate notice of the incident.

The plaintiffs allege hackers have already use the personal information that was released in the breach to engage in identity theft. They also argue there remains a high risk that the hackers can commit other crimes like opening bank accounts, taking out loans or obtaining fake driver’s licenses in the victims’ names.

While SouthState reportedly issued a letter to customers regarding the breach, the plaintiffs argue it left out virtually all the important information.

Says the lawsuit,

“Despite defendant’s intentional opacity about the root cause of this incident, several facts may be gleaned from the notice letter, including:

a) that this data breach was the work of cybercriminals;

b) that the cybercriminals first infiltrated defendant’s networks and systems, and downloaded data from the networks and systems, and

c) that once inside defendant’s networks and systems, the cybercriminals targeted information including plaintiff’s and class members’ Social Security numbers for download and theft.”

The plaintiffs are seeking damages, which include the need have to constantly monitor their financial and personal records for years to come, the lawsuit says.

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