Zappos, Amazon Sued Over Data Breach

Shoe retailer Zappos.com and its parent company, Amazon.com, are being sued for exposing customer data in a breach affecting some 24 million customers.

According to an Associated Press report on the lawsuit against Zappos, a Texas woman has taken the lead in the Kentucky lawsuit, alleging that she and millions of other customers were harmed by the release of personal account information.

Officials representing Zappos in Nevada and parent company Amazon in Seattle declined to comment to AP on the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Louisville.

Zappos alerted employees and customers by email Sunday that names, phone numbers, and email addresses of its customers may have been accessed in a hacker attack. The company said customers' credit card and payment information weren't stolen, according to AP.

Zappos urged customers to reset passwords to accounts and any other websites where they use similar passwords.

Zappos said the hacker gained access to its internal network and systems through one of the company's servers in Kentucky.

Attorneys for plaintiff Theresa D. Stevens of Beaumont, Texas, are seeking class-action status on behalf of 24 million customers for what the lawsuit alleges was a violation of the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act.

The civil negligence lawsuit seeks unspecified millions of dollars in compensatory and exemplary damages for emotional distress and loss of privacy, along with a court order for the company to pay for customer credit monitoring and identity theft insurance and periodic audits to ensure customer data is secure, the AP report says.

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