On Monday, a First American Financial customer named David Gritz filed a class-action lawsuit against the real-estate title insurer for an alleged data breach exposing 885 million files. The breach was reported last week by cybersecurity researchers who claimed the files “were available without authentication to anyone with a web browser,” as reported by Bloomberg. Gritz’s lawyer claims that hundreds of millions of bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, and financial records were exposed because the company “failed to implement even rudimentary security measures.” The exorbitant volume of data includes files dating back to 2003. The lawsuit will play out in a U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, Calif., where First American is based.
