Eventbrite Faces Class Action Lawsuit Following Ticketfly Data Breach

Ticket company Eventbrite is facing a class action lawsuit due to a security breach that allowed a hacker to obtain the personal information of 27 million users. The attack, which the company called a “security breach”, occurred last May when a hacker managed to break into the database of Ticketfly.

According to Pitchfork, the lawsuit, brought by a woman named Shanice Kloss, claims that the company’s negligence is to blame for the hack. Kloss filed the suit in Illinois’ Cook County Superior Court and is accusing the company of consumer fraud, deceptive business practices, breach of contract, breach of implied contract and negligence.

The class action lawsuit is targeting Eventbrite, the owners of Ticketfly, who bought the company from the music streaming site, Pandora, in 2017. Pandora had previously bought the company in 2015.

In her lawsuit, Kloss claims that the company “failed to prevent, detect, or otherwise act in a reasonable manner or within a reasonable time.”

The attack happened on May 31 and forced Ticketfly to shut down, but Kloss claims that she and other users were not given adequate advanced notice to change passwords or protect their information. As a result, their names, addresses, phone numbers and emails were all exposed by hackers who uploaded them to a public server.

The lawsuit also says that Eventbrite was not honest about the severity of the hack and the dangers it posed to users.

“Aside from a passive support page and a single Tweet on social media, Eventbrite failed to take measures to alert,” the lawsuit claims.

Eventbrite did confirm that a hacker did obtain this information, but stated that they were not to steal passwords or credit cards. Despite this Kloss is suing Eventbrite for the mental anguish she has suffered due to the fear of her personal information being used without her knowledge.

The lawsuit is also seeking damages and looks to force the company to provide fraud monitoring services for customers affected by the breach.

As of now, it is unknown how much the lawsuit is seeking damages, and Eventbrite has not publicly given a statement to the press. Billboard reached out to the company for a comment but was told that the company did not comment on ongoing litigation.