Yahoo Class Action Says Small Businesses Affected by Massive Data Breaches

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A Texas customer of Yahoo Small Business is seeking compensation for losses he attributes to two Yahoo data breaches.

Plaintiff Brian Neff is suing defendant Yahoo! Inc. and its subsidiary Aabaco Small Business LLC. Both of these companies have in turn provided fee-based small business services like website hosting, email services and online advertising.

Neff alleges Yahoo and Aabaco failed to adequately protect its small business customers’ sensitive information from two data breaches that occurred in 2013 and 2014.

Yahoo did not disclose these breaches until more than two years after they happened, Neff says.

Yahoo originally provided the small business services in question under the moniker Yahoo Small Business. Neff says Aabaco took over those services in November 2015, at which time customers were notified that their services from then on would come from Aabaco Small Business.

According to Neff, Yahoo didn’t announce the 2014 data breach until September 2016. The company said the theft included personally identifiable information such as “users’ names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, passwords, and, in some cases, security questions and answers,” Neff says.

It wasn’t until December 2016 that Yahoo disclosed the earlier and even larger data breach. The company said that in August 2013, hackers got a hold of the personally identifiable information of more than one billion Yahoo users.

Neff says he himself was a victim of identity theft after the Yahoo Small Business data breach. He claims that in May 2015, someone incurred fraudulent charges on two of his credit cards.

Both cards were on file with Yahoo as payment for his Yahoo Small Business services, Neff says. He believes those fraudulent charges resulted directly from the Yahoo data breach.

Besides Neff, other plaintiffs have responded promptly to the Yahoo data breach announcement with legal claims of their own. Shortly after the company’s September 2016 announcement, plaintiffs Jennifer Myers and Paul Dugas filed a Yahoo data breach class action lawsuit on behalf of individual Yahoo users.

Myers and Dugas dispute the company’s claim that the breach did not extend to users’ financial information. They argue that the personal information exposed in the breach is the type frequently used in the perpetration of identity theft.

In December 2016, Yahoo premium subscriber Gerald Cleaver filed his own Yahoo premium subscriber data breach class action lawsuit on behalf of himself and other users who paid $19.99 per month for Yahoo premium service.

Cleaver faults Yahoo for failing to protect the substantial amount of personal information users must hand over in order to sign up for a Yahoo premium account.

Neff seeks to represent a plaintiff Class consisting of all Yahoo Small Business and Aabaco Small Business customers in the U.S. whose personally identifiable information was stolen in either the 2013 or 2014 data breach.

He is asking the court for equitable relief that would require Yahoo Small Business to implement more robust data security measures and policies, including more specific disclosure of exactly what information was exposed in the data breaches.

He also seeks an award of damages, restitution, disgorgement of revenues related to the allegedly wrongful conduct, and reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and costs associated with the litigation.

The plaintiffs are represented by David Azar, Ariana J. Tadler, Henry J. Kelston and Andrei V. Rado of Milberg LLP and by Roger L. Mandel and Bruce E. Bagelman of Lackey Hershman LLP.

The Yahoo Small Business Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Brian Neff v. Yahoo! Inc., et al., Case No. 5:17-cv-00641, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

UPDATE: On Oct. 3, 2017, Yahoo announced that the personal private information of all 3 billion Yahoo users was exposed in a 2013 data hack.

UPDATE 2: September 2019, the Yahoo data breach class action settlement is now open. Click here to file a claim.