Zynga faces lawsuit over 2019 data breach

Zynga

Zynga, one of the biggest companies in mobile gaming is facing a class-action lawsuit over 2019 data breach. Hackers last year were able to obtain the data of 172 million Draw Something and Words With Friends players. The company didn’t share the exact number but it advised the players to change their passwords, but the story didn’t end there. Two individuals are suing it now.

Zynga is accused of failing to “reasonably safeguard” players’ personal information

The district court of Californa is accusing the firm of “failure to reasonably safeguard” their personal information. This includes names, addresses, email addresses, passwords and more. Also, a hacker named Gnosticplayers told The Hacker News in 2019 he accessed names, email addresses, login IDs, phone numbers, hashed passwords, Facebook IDs, and more within the data breach. He also mentioned that he uncovered “clear text passwords” for more than seven million users.

Zynga Words With Friends
Screenshot from Words with Friends game.

According to court, Zynga failed to inform its players in a timely manner about the breach. The lawsuit as filed by two victims of the incident which one of whom is a minor. The lawsuit specifies 14 counts of action and claims for relief, ranging from negligence and violation of state data breach statutes to unjust enrichment. It also claims that it didn’t email the users and “effectively hid the fact that it suffered a data breach”.

Polygon and Games Industry reached out to get a comment but the company declined or did not respond. As we said, Zynga is one of the popular American mobile game companies. They own hit games like FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Words With Friends, and Mafia Wars. They own popular studios such as Gram Games, OMGPOP and NaturalMotion. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms and states its mission as “connecting the world through games.

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