Sony hack settlement agreed with 9 former employees, pending court approval

3 Sep 2015

After much back and forth, a Sony hack settlement has been agreed with nine of the company’s former employees who had attempted to sue the company over claims their personal information was leaked following last year’s hack.

The eventual reaching of a Sony hack settlement was seemingly inevitable following the enormous data breach last year, with fingers being pointed in all directions, from disgruntled employees to hackers from North Korea.

Almost 47,000 people were inadvertently caught up in the affair, ranging from freelancers with Sony Pictures to celebrities, following a threat that this hack would happen if the company released the film The Interview, which followed Seth Rogen and James Franco travelling to North Korea to assassinate the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un.

Now, according to CNet, nine of the employees in the affair have – pending court approval – accepted a settlement with Sony over their personal details being revealed as part of the hack.

The original claim made by the former employees accused Sony of knowing about the hack prior to its occurrence and claimed it had not made its systems secure to protect their most sensitive information, including where they live and their Social Security numbers.

Among these nine employees, some complained that following the breach they began to notice a number of examples of evidence fraud with their name and information being used to open credit card accounts as well as their information being sold on the black market.

Details of the settlement have not been revealed by either Sony or the former employees, but was revealed by the court filings posted to the Los Angeles federal court.

Sony Pictures building image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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