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Florida, Connecticut, Illinois Investigating eBay Data Breach

Pam Bondi
MyFloridaLegal.com

The Florida Attorney General’s Office says it’s part of a group of attorney’s general looking into how more than 140 million user records were compromised.

The data breach of eBay is one of the largest in history and Florida is one of three states investigating how hackers tapped into some 145 million  user records, including email addresses, birthdays and physical addresses. That’s more than enough information to wage large scale identity thefts.

A report from Reuters, citing Connecticut’s attorney general, says the two state’s along with Illinois, will focus on eBay's data security measures, how the breach occurred, how many people have been affected and the company’s response to the incident. 

In a statement, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi highlighted a recently approved bill she believes will protect Florida consumers from future attacks. The bill gives Florida businesses and government entities 30 days to notify the attorney general’s office when a breach has occurred. It’s unclear how the bill would affect eBay because the company is registered in California.

Reports of the eBay breach come five months after Target was hacked and personal information from 70 million customers stolen. Last October, software maker Adobe had data from 152 million accounts stolen making that the largest data breach in history.

Follow @HatterLynn

Lynn Hatter is a Florida A&M University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Lynn has served as reporter/producer for WFSU since 2007 with education and health care issues as her key coverage areas.  She is an award-winning member of the Capital Press Corps and has participated in the NPR Kaiser Health News Reporting Partnership and NPR Education Initiative. 

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