More than 1,000 users of streaming service Tving have filed a class-action lawsuit seeking damages over a massive personal data breach.
Law firm Jihyang filed the suit on behalf of 1,051 affected users against Tving at Seoul Central District Court on Thursday, according to legal sources.
The firm is seeking 300,000 won ($196) in consolation damages per plaintiff as an initial claim. The amount could increase depending on the outcome of further investigation.
"The Tving incident is not a simple case of external hacking — it is a clear man-made disaster caused by a company that failed to take even the most basic legal protective measures," Jihyang said. "We intend to establish that this was the result of deceptive and unlawful terms-of-service practices and hold the company strictly accountable."
The legal team plans to argue that victims face ongoing exposure to secondary crimes such as voice phishing and identity theft as a direct result of the breach. The firm will also contend that Tving bears liability for collecting personal information unrelated to its service provision.
Tving announced June 3 that an unidentified hacker had breached its database and leaked users' personal information. The number of affected users identified so far stands at 13 million.
The leaked data includes user IDs, names, dates of birth, gender, connection information (CI), duplicate registration verification information (DI), mobile phone numbers (last four digits encrypted), email addresses (the portion before the domain encrypted), refund account numbers (encrypted) and passwords (one-way encrypted).
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