Neopets doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage here on MOP, but it earned headlines for all the wrong reasons last year when over 69 million users were affected by a personal data breach. The hacker at the time had access to the data sometime between January and July of 2022, where he downloaded user details such as names, email addresses, passwords, and other personal information, and was attempting to sell the data for $100K worth of Bitcoin.
That unfortunate bit of news is being brought up once more as NetDragon, the owner of Neopets stewards Jumpstart Games, is facing a possible class action lawsuit for the hack. Plaintiff Biankha Negrin claims in the filing that she was unaware of the data breach until August 2022 and that she was unaware the game still had her details on file. Negrin’s lawyers further assert that NetDragon’s cybersecurity approach was negligent, noting that the company is “a sophisticated organization with the resources to deploy robust cybersecurity protocols.”
The filing asks the California Central District Court to deem the lawsuit a class action, with damages to be determined at a later time, while Negrin herself is also asking the court to demand stronger security measures for Neopets accounts.
