McDelivery Customers Serve McDonald’s Class Action Lawsuit After Data Breach

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McDelivery Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit Overview: 

• Who: McDonald’s is being sued by customers who ordered McDelivery in Korea.
• Why: McDonald’s is accused of being responsible for an April, 2021, data breach that impacted customers of its delivery service worldwide.
• Where: The class action lawsuit is pending in Illinois federal court and seeks to represent McDelivery customers exposed in the data breach.

McDonald’s customers who placed “McDelivery” orders in Korea are not loving that their private information was stolen in a data breach and then allegedly used against them, and are serving a worldwide class action lawsuit to the fast-food giant.

Plaintiffs Jeong-Su Kim, Hue-Soung Jun, and Jong Min Lee — all customers who used McDelivery in Korea — filed the class action lawsuit against McDonald’s USA, LLC and McDonald’s Corporation Oct. 5 in an Illinois federal court. 

The class action arises out of the April 15, 2021, McDonald’s data breach announced in June. The fast-food chain announced that McDelivery customers’ addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses were stolen by attackers. 

The plaintiffs say data was stolen from McDelivery customers worldwide, and they are looking to represent anyone — regardless of where they live — who registered for a McDelivery account to place an order for delivery of food while in Korea and had their private information exposed in the breach.

The lawsuit says affected customers include many foreigners — US citizens included — who visit Korea, including tens of thousands of members of the US Armed Forces and their families, English language teachers, employees temporarily assigned to work in Korea, and other ex-pats.

McDonald’s Left McDelivery Customers’ Private Info Vulnerable to Hackers, Says Class Action

“Plaintiffs provided this data to Defendants with the expectation that Defendants would manage, maintain, and secure this data in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. They did not,” the class action states. 

“As a result of the Data Breach, Plaintiffs and thousands of other Class Members suffered losses in the form of the value of their time, anxiety, mental and emotional distress reasonably incurred to investigate, remedy, prevent, or mitigate the effects of the attack.” 

The lawsuit points out that phishing scams are common in Korea, and says plaintiff Lee was targeted after the data breach by someone emailing him saying they had access to his cloud storage and had  “found interesting photos and videos and assume that Mr. Lee’s friends and colleagues would not simply think the photos and videos are ‘interesting.’”

“The author’s threat continues by asking Mr. Lee to imagine what could happen if the hacked files—which according to the author are ‘very personal and inappropriate’—were leaked.” 

Plaintiff Kim says he had an exponential increase in the number of unwanted spam emails from foreign companies since the data breach. And plaintiff Jun says has been receiving constant notifications of unauthorized email log-in attempts in Japan. 

The plaintiffs seek relief including, but not limited to, statutory damages and injunctive relief including improvements to Defendants’ data security systems. 

The plaintiffs are suing for violations of the Consumer Fraud And Deceptive Business Practices Act, and violations of The Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act and Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act.

American fast food giant McDonald’s has faced backlash over the years from both employees and consumers, with numerous lawsuits and class action lawsuits resulting from a variety of allegations against McDonald’s as a company. These allegations have ranged from claims of misleading advertising to claims that the fast food chain discriminates against Black people. Click here to read about more lawsuits against the company. 

What do you think of the allegations against McDonald’s in this case? Let us know in the comments! 

The plaintiff is represented by Shannon M. McNulty of Clifford Law Offices, P.C.; Christopher L. Lebsock, Michael P. Lehmann, James J. Pizzirusso, and Jane I. Shin of Hausfeld LLP; Young-Ki Rhee of We The People Law Group and Amy E. Keller of Dicello Levitt Gutzler. 

The McDonald’s Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Jeong-Su Kim et al., v. McDonald’s USA, LLC, et al., Case No. 1:21-cv-05287, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division.

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