Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the Florida-based background check firm that was hacked by cybercriminals, who now say they have access to millions of Americans’ social security numbers.
National Public Data, officially known as Jerico Pictures Inc., is staring down eight potential class-action lawsuits filed just this month in the U.S. District Court of Fort Lauderdale, The Sun Sentinel reports.
The hacker group USDoD stole 2.9 billion private records belonging to people in North America and the United Kingdom from National Public Data, which provides background checks and criminal records to private investigators, staffing agencies and HR departments.
USDoD claimed in April that it had access to records from every person in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., but that has since been shown to be an exaggeration.
Groups that reviewed the leak found it did contain a worrying amount of personal information, including names, social security numbers, and addresses, but many of its records are duplicates or show little information. The group likely has access to hundreds of millions of people’s personal information, but not billions.
National Public Data, which is based in Coral Springs, Florida, has not provided figures on how many people’s data was stolen.
The first lawsuit said that USDoD put the personal information for sale on the dark web for $3.5 million.