News has it that British Airways had finally settled the class-action (of sorts) lawsuit related to an alleged data breach, that it had been hit with by a group of law firms. While it is not clear under what terms the settlement was reached (PGMBM, one of the law agencies which had filed the suit, has said that the agreement is “confidential”), it is expected that the airline had to cough up amounts worth millions of pounds to close the chapter in the England and Wales High Court.
As per a statement released by PGMBM, the matter was resolved only when British Airways agreed to compensate the “qualifying claimants who were part of the litigation.” However, the resolution did not involve any “admission of liability” from the airline.
Back in 2018
If you’re wondering the suit is about, in the first place, let’s brush up on your memory a little. It relates to the 2018 BA data breach, which involved the credit card details of as many as 380 thousand people using British Airways being stolen, due to its payment processing web pages being infected with Magecart.
What made the data so easily accessible, you ask? Well, it was because of a storage failure on BA’s end. The firm had been saving card details from its users as plain text, without any encryption, since 2015, without implementing MFA. This eventually led to the hack, and resulted in the group of regulators fining BA.
Huge Sums of Compensation
Following the settlement, a spokesperson for BA apologized to all those who had been affected by the problem, and further added that they are “pleased” to finally have been able to settle the group action suit.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for PGMBM has called the settlement a win on the regulator’s part, even though BA ended up not admitting any wrongdoing. At the same time, the millions of pounds that are going to be coming out as pay from BA will benefit both, the individuals who had their first breached, and the lawyers who have been fighting their case, who are set to receive as much as 35 percent of the total payout. Keller Lenkner, another law firm that had participated in the suit, said on its page that an average “compensation of around £2,000 per claimant seems likely.” This seems like good news to the 16,000 people who had applied to participate in the litigation.
Source: The A Register