“As a result, some customers have reported fraudulent credit card and bank activity,” Stipes said. The issue is not unique to the UH system, Stipes said, and is a nationwide situation. “The University of Houston is aware of a data breach that occurred on the website of Herff Jones, a vendor that provides caps, gowns and other commencement products to high school and college graduates,” said UH spokesperson Chris Stipes. The University is informed about the situation with Herff Jones and is monitoring it. On top of that, now there’s a data breach? And no one is notifying us? We wish that either UH or Herff Jones would notify us when it comes to our personal information being stolen.” “Graduation has been such a difficult process, which leaves a lot of us with unanswered questions. “I was very frustrated learning this,” Ochoa said. She’s has not heard back from UH about this issue. Ochoa’s account was frozen, and now she has no access to her money. “Either having frozen accounts or money being taken out of their accounts.” “This member shared these tweets in the chat and now many people on our campus are sharing that they are experiencing the same thing,” Ochoa continued. “One member of the group searched up ‘Herff Jones’ on Twitter and found many tweets from other students on different campuses talking about how there’s been a nationwide breach and money has been stolen from their accounts,” Ochoa said. She was a part of a group chat on GroupMe with other graduating seniors who were confused about the irregular bank activity. “Just a few days ago, I received an email and phone call from my bank stating that my card information was hacked, but no money was taken from my account.” It contends that Herff Jones “did not use reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the sensitive information they were collecting, causing customers’ PII to be exposed and sold on the dark web.“I ordered my cap and gown back in February or March,” Ochoa told the Cougar. The complaint guesses that the data breach may have been done via scraping or skimming data entered on the website. The complaint, which was filed on May 27, 2021, alleges, “As of this writing, Herff Jones has not yet provided notice to state attorneys general, to the public via press release, or to customers and lesees via email or physical mail, leaving many customers in the dark as to the vulnerability of their data.” While the company has confirmed that it experienced a data breach, it has not yet provided details about it. The complaint adds to this an accusation: “All of this personally identifiable information was compromised due to negligent and/or careless acts and omissions and the failure to protect customers’ data.” Herff Jones’ customers face a lifetime risk of identity theft.” Because of Data Breach, customers’ PII is still available on the dark web for criminals to access and abuse. Hackers accessed and then offered for sale the unencrypted, unredacted, stolen PII to criminals. The complaint alleges, “That means the Data Breach worked. Students can only do business with the company their school has chosen.Īccording to the complaint, hackers were able to steal the students PII, including names and payment cards. Schools contract with Herff Jones for the rental of “regalia” for graduation. The complaint claims that students at the University of Houston, Purdue University, the University of Illinois and Urbana-Champaign, the State University of New York at Binghamton, and other schools had reported that their PII had been stolen. By May 12, the complaint says that news organizations began reporting that the company had suffered a data breach which exposed customers’ personally identifiable information (PII), resulting in fraudulent charges on their payment cards. Subclasses have also been defined for individuals living in California, Indiana, and New York.Īround May 5, 2020, graduating students posting on Reddit claimed they had found fraudulent charges on their debit and credit cards, after renting caps and gowns from Herff Jones. The Nationwide Class for this action is all individuals whose PII was compromised in the data breach that is the subject of this complaint. The complaint alleges, “These rentals were the only common charges that all students had in common.” The complaint for this class action alleges that the company had a data breach, claiming that a number of students who rented caps and gowns for their graduations from Herff Jones suffered fraudulent credit and debit card charges on their cards. Herff Jones sells class rings and rents other items related to graduation, such as caps and gowns.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |