Twitter Slapped with Lawsuit Over Data Breach Affecting Hundreds of Millions

AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

Twitter was hit with a lawsuit this week from a user who claimed his data was part of a wealth of data taken by hackers between 2021 and 2022.

At the center of this case is whether the data breached was private or publicly available information. Plaintiff Stephen Gerber is seeking damages that could exceed $5 million.

The data breach allegedly affected approximately 200 million users. Bloomberg first reported on the lawsuit, which was filed in San Francisco.

Bloomberg reported:

Gerber blames a defect in Twitter’s application programming interface (API) that allowed cybercriminals to obtain usernames, emails and phone numbers of users of the social media website.

In January, an anonymous user on the hacker site BreachForums published a database that they claimed to contain basic information on hundreds of millions of Twitter users. Twitter said in a blog post that there was “no evidence that the data being sold online was obtained by exploiting a vulnerability of Twitter systems.”

The lawsuit is requesting a third party to review Twitter’s systems. The legal action follows Twitter also being sued this week by a vendor for more than a quarter of a million dollars for fees that have allegedly gone unpaid.

Canary Marketing said in their lawsuit that Twitter failed to pay for services provided between 2020 and 2022,” Business Insider reported.

“Twitter appears to interpret the MSA [contract agreement] as allowing it to pay or not pay Canary invoices when Twitter decides to do so,” that lawsuit states.

Since taking over Twitter late last year, Elon Musk has held back in his criticism of the previous regime, accusing the company of losing millions a day, and criticizing its policing of bot accounts and censorship of posts. He’s released a series of internal documents through the Twitter Files highlighting controversial decision-making at the company before Musk’s takeover.