Data leakage turned into a class action lawsuit for Yandex.Food

Data leakage turned into a class action lawsuit for Yandex.Food

Data leakage turned into a class action lawsuit for Yandex.Food
Dissatisfied users of the food delivery service, whose personal data “leaked” into the Internet, filed a class action lawsuit.  They demand compensation for non-pecuniary damage in the amount of 100,000 rubles each.  Formally, there are grounds for this in the law “On Personal Data”.

We should recall that the leakage of personal data became known in early March.  The company found one of its employees guilty of the incident.  And soon, the attackers made m the data of users and the amount of paid orders public on a separate website.

The website was blocked, and the Russian Federal State Agency for Health and Consumer Rights fined the service (under article 13.11 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation).
Yandex.Food offered the victims of the incident a 20% discount on orders within a couple of weeks.
However, many citizens were outraged by the company's initial reaction to the incident.  The press service of the service continued to convince customers that nothing dangerous had happened, and important financial information (access to payment data and banking resources) was protected.  At the same time, fraudsters were already calling customers at that moment, and promotional offers were coming from unknown numbers. Important officials and businessmen turned out to be among the clients.

On March 23, on the website of the “Network Freedoms” project, its representatives began to collect appeals from affected clients, which were necessary for filing an application with the court.  Damir Gainutdinov, the head of the project, owned by the international human rights organization Agora, said that the number of applications had reached 300.

Only after that, already on March 24, a public apology from the head of the service, Roman Maresov, was published on the company's blog.  Users learned from him that their compromised data was "packed" by hackers with data from other services, since Yandex.Food did not store last names, first names, and email addresses.  According to Maresov, the company learned "many lessons" from what had happened, and the case itself was called unprecedented.
After that the appeal from 33 applicants has been sent to the Zamoskvoretsky District Court.
Their interests are represented by the legal service Destra Legal.  And although the court itself has not yet registered the application, experts believe that several hundred more clients may join the lawsuit during the proceedings.

The opportunity to go to court with class actions appeared in 2019.  Corresponding amendments were made to the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation.  Despite the solution of the issue in civil procedural legislation, this practice has not become widespread.  According to experts, if the court accepts the claim for consideration, it is unlikely that the applicants will be able to receive more than 3,000 rubles, given the established judicial practice in considering such cases.

31.03.2022