Spark Networks Fails to Throw Out Data Breach Lawsuit

Spark Networks has reportedly failed in its attempt to convince a Californian federal judge that it should be immune from a class action lawsuit.

Notorious hacker ‘ShinyHunters’ was able to obtain more than 30 million user records from Zoosk. The private data was then listed on a popular cybercrime marketplace for $18,000 as part of a larger database.

The legal team at Spark Networks argued that the court shouldn’t have jurisdiction over it, because the company is based in Berlin. However, the judge did not agree and the lawsuit is going ahead as planned.

There is still yet to be a final decision made on whether or not Zoosk will be allowed to dismiss the case entirely.

A group of Zoosk users filed the lawsuit in July because they believe they were not notified of the breach in enough time to take reasonable action. Approximately 85% of the platform’s community was affected.

ShinyHunters came to the attention of the online dating industry again earlier this week, when they leaked the personal information of over 2 million MeetMindful users. This time the data was available to download for free and was viewed 1,500 times before it was taken down.

A MeetMindful spokesperson said they were “deeply sorry” for what happened and that they acted as quickly as possible before adding extra security resources to protect from future attacks.

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