Virgin Media failed to protect personal data

Virgin Media failed to protect personal data of some 900,000 people when a database was left exposed between April 2019 and February 2020.

In response to this leak of personal information, we launched a legal action for justice and we are representing thousands of people who are claiming compensation as part of our group action. Eligible victims who have placed their case with us can benefit from No Win, No Fee legal representation.

Find out if you are still in time to claim by completing a few forms our website ASAP here now.

How Virgin Media failed to protect personal data

Virgin Media failed to protect personal data when a database containing the information of some 900,000 people (mainly customers) was left exposed online for a 10-month period.

The data became exposed due to an incorrect configuration problem, and it took a third-party security research to identify and alert the company to the problem. Unfortunately, by the time the the alarm was raised, the database had already been left exposed between April 2019 and February 2020. During this period, at least one unknown third party is understood to have accessed the database.

Ultimately, this was a completely avoidable leak of information that happened due to an error. Policies and procedures can prevent this kind of thing from happening, as can systems that can be put in place to ensure data security. For whatever reason, this did not happen in this case and information was exposed for a prolonged period of time.

Our legal action for justice

Because Virgin Media failed to protect personal data of some 900,000 people, we consider that they are liable to issue compensation to anyone who brings a claim and was affected by the data leak. This is on the basis that we consider there has been a breach of the GDPR because Virgin Media leaked personal information that was in its care.

The GDPR is clear in respect of information security and the rights of data subjects to decide who knows what about them. In a case such as this, we consider that liability is very straight forward – an error has occurred and people’s information has been exposed.

The GDPR can entitle victims of a data leak to claim compensation for any distress that has been caused by the loss of control of personal information. You could claim for just the distress alone, but if anybody has suffered any losses or expenses then these could be considered as well.

Find out if you are still in time to claim

Ultimately, Virgin Media failed to protect personal data and anybody who has been affected by this leak could be entitled to claim compensation. Eligible claimants may be able to join our legal action for justice on a No Win, No Fee basis, which means that we can waive our legal fees if the case does not succeed (subject to the agreed terms and conditions).

We are now several years on from the discovery of the breach and from when the leak commenced. Data breach compensation claims can have several time-frames and deadlines in which people must start to their claim. You may already be out of time to claim, but you can complete a few simple forms on our website here now to find out if you are still eligible to bring a case.

We always strongly recommend that you should never leave it too late. The longer you leave it, the greater the risks are that you may lose out on your chance to claim thousands of pounds in compensation. It is very common for people to miss the deadlines and we routinely must turn away people who try to instruct us for cases where deadlines have passed many years ago.

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