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Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
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Bytes Bite: Why Corporate Data Breaches Should Give Standing To Affected Individuals, Caden Hayes
Bytes Bite: Why Corporate Data Breaches Should Give Standing To Affected Individuals, Caden Hayes
Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice
High-profile data hacks are not uncommon. In fact, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, there have been at least 7,961 data breaches, exposing over 10,000,000,000 accounts in total, since 2005. These shocking numbers are not particularly surprising when taking into account the value of information stolen. For example, cell phone numbers, as exposed in a Yahoo! hack, are worth $10 a piece on the black market, meaning the hackers stood to make $30,000,000,000 from that one hack. That dollar amount does not even consider copies the hackers could make and later resell. Yet while these hackers make astronomical payoffs, the …