So far, there have been 2 reported suicides thought to be linked to a recent infidelity website data breach. With millions of Internet users affected, there could be more to come. If you've lost a loved one because an infidelity website failed to protect their privacy, you might be able to file a wrongful death case.

What Is A Wrongful Death Case?

A wrongful death case is handled by a personal injury lawyer and usually filed by the family members of the deceased. It involves trying to recover the damages incurred as the result of their loved one's passing. Damages sued for may include the pre-death suffering of the deceased, funeral and burial costs, and loss of expected income, care, and love from the deceased. In order to be successful in winning the case, the plaintiff must prove that their loved one's death was the immediate result of another party's negligence.

If an infidelity website data breach caused your loved one such pain and embarrassment that they felt the need to end their life, then that website may be responsible for their death and should be held accountable for the damages the death has caused.

But The Website Didn't Release The Information -- Hackers Did

It doesn't matter. As soon as your loved one signed up with the website, the website became obligated to provide them with a certain duty of care. In your case, this duty of care required them to keep your loved one's personal information completely confidential. The company failed to provide enough security to keep hackers out of their system, and therefore failed to uphold their duty of care.

Of course, since hackers are constantly evolving their techniques, companies do have some protection from being charged with failing to uphold a duty of care when breaches are the result of new and unknown cyber-attack methods. But that wasn't the case with this growing-infamous infidelity website.

Could The Cyber-Attack Have Been Prevented?

According to industry experts, it would have been quite easy to prevent this life-damaging breach. If the website would have used cloud-based streaming for their information storage, the released emails would have never been susceptible to the hashing methods used by the hackers. In fact, the company could have implemented measures to have the emails automatically erased from the system after a set period of time.

Instead, the infidelity website profited from those seeking total confidentiality, charging a $19 fee for those who wished to permanently delete their information from the system. Only after the cyber-attack did the company offer to waive the fee and allow free deletion of sensitive data.

But What About The Claims Of Fake Email Accounts?

It's true that some of the emails leaked in the recent infidelity website security breach didn't actually belong to people using the site. This is still a big security error made by the casual encounter website. The website should have been validating these emails to ensure that they belonged to the people trying to use them.

Your Next Step

If you've lost a loved one to suicide due to the recent infidelity website data breach, it's time to consult a personal injury lawyer. A wrongful death case requires that you prove a company acted negligently and that as a result of that negligence a life was lost.

There's plenty of evidence that the headline-making casual encounter website acted negligently; you just need to work with your lawyer to build a case proving that their negligence caused your loved one a level of shame and embarrassment so deep that they felt they had no other option but to end their life.

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