Brian White  |  December 18, 2020

Category: Data Breach

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Expedia.com data breach prompts class action lawsuit.

A data breach exposing tens of millions of personal records is behind a class action lawsuit against Expedia.com, its affiliated vacation-booking websites, and the Amazon technology that makes it work. 

California resident Lauren Schaubach, the named plaintiff, says the companies in charge failed to adequately protect customers’ information from a recent data breach and left it to the news media to properly inform them it happened. 

The class action lawsuit centers around a widely reported data breach back in November involving Amazon Web Services technology and hotel-booking software, all tied to Expedia and Hotel.com services. 

Website Planet, a digital firm specializing in network security, discovered that a “misconfigured” cloud-based server, hosted by Amazon Web Services and used by one of Expedia’s partners, left sensitive personal information unprotected from hackers and other criminal elements. 

The server, known as an “S3 bucket,” held more than 180,000 records from August 2020 alone, according to Website Planet. Experts estimate at least 10 million credit cards, addresses, passport numbers, and driver licenses dating back as far as 2013 could be included, but it’s hard to say precisely how much “due to the amount of data exposed.”

 An investigation showed one reservation record, for example, could hold personal identifying information for an entire family.

Schaubach argues Expedia and Amazon Web Services “failed to maintain proper measures to detect hacking and intrusion,” and violates California laws requiring such. 

Citing California’s Consumer Protection Act, Schaubach says these companies are legally obligated to follow standards preventing incidents like the data breach in November.

Expedia.com data breach prompts class action lawsuit.She claims the personal identifying information, which included granular data like the three digit security code on the back of the card, was not “stored or hashed” in a way that complied with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, specifically pointing out to an encrypted format used to store payment information. 

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, also known as PCI DSS, was adopted globally beginning in 2004 as a way to curb credit and debit card fraud. 

Amazon Web Services, Expedia, and its partners “failed to maintain proper measures to detect hacking and intrusion,” she said. “They have explicitly violated the CCPA [California Consumer Protection Act].”

Furthermore, the companies have yet to inform the plaintiffs of the data breach, according to the class action lawsuit, who instead learned their private data was exposed from news reports. 

Schaubach says she still hasn’t been notified officially from Expedia or Amazon Web Services about the data breach as of the date of her filing the class action lawsuit, Dec. 17. 

These companies “should have had breach detection protocols in place such that they could have alerted consumers significantly earlier,” Schaubach said in the complaint, but instead they now “ face an imminent and ongoing risk of identity theft and similar cyber crimes.”

Schaubach is seeking to form a Class of plaintiffs from California whose personal identifying information was exposed in the November data breach. 

Formally the class action lawsuit accuses Hotels.com, Expedia, and Amazon Web Services of violating California’s Consumer Protection Act, Unfair Business Practices Act, and negligence 

Do you book vacations using any of these services? Have you been exposed in the related data breach? Let us know in the comments below. 

Counsel representing the plaintiffs in this class action lawsuit is Todd Friedman of the Law Offices of Todd M. Friedman, PC.

The Data Breach Class Action Lawsuit is Schaubach, et al. v. Hotels.com LP, et al., Case No. 8:20-cv-02370, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

We tell you about cash you can claim EVERY WEEK! Sign up for our free newsletter.

696 thoughts onData Breach Exposes Expedia Customers’ Information, Prompts Class Action Lawsuit

  1. KILA M BROOKS says:

    Please add me

  2. Ken Medina says:

    My Expedia account has been hacked and obviously email, phone number and password changed. Expedia is telling me there is nothing they can do to help me recoup my $450 in lost rewards that I had been saving.

  3. Edie Lustig says:

    Pls add me.

  4. Cynthia Welch says:

    There was a flight booked in my name with spirt airlines for me and my 2 girls I have never flew with spirt airlines $358.17 was taken out of my bank I called this spirt airlines they told me it was booked through a third party Expedia/Travelocity spirt would not give me a refund they said I was a no show,of course I was a no show because I DID NOT book this flight,and I cannot get a number to Expedia/Travelocity to speak with a live agent to get my money back I had to go to through a lot of crap because my bank card was hacked by Expedia/Travelocity I had to go to my bank cancel my banking and set up a new one this is ridiculous can someone please tell me what I have wto do to get my money back with everything going on with this pandemic I cannot afford to lose $358.17 thank you

1 65 66 67

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. By submitting your comment and contact information, you agree to receive marketing emails from Top Class Actions regarding this and/or similar lawsuits or settlements, and/or to be contacted by an attorney or law firm to discuss the details of your potential case at no charge to you if you qualify. Required fields are marked *

Please note: Top Class Actions is not a settlement administrator or law firm. Top Class Actions is a legal news source that reports on class action lawsuits, class action settlements, drug injury lawsuits and product liability lawsuits. Top Class Actions does not process claims and we cannot advise you on the status of any class action settlement claim. You must contact the settlement administrator or your attorney for any updates regarding your claim status, claim form or questions about when payments are expected to be mailed out.