Susan Harvey, from California, recently filed a lawsuit against Google claiming that she lost thousands of dollars over a 16-month period due to the breach of her Google Play Store.
The relevant complaint also states that Harvey, when she noticed the suspicious movements in her account, immediately sent the relevant report to the company, which at first did not believe her, but even after she managed to convince them, no action was taken to protect her account, nor to compensate her.
It all started in March 2013, when Harvey bought her first Android phone and signed up for Google using her existing email address. She used her Bank of America credit card on that account so she could download content. For a year after her initial transaction, she hadn't noticed anything suspicious in her transactions.
When Harvey got a new Android smartphone in August 2014 and wanted to transfer content from her old phone to the new one, she logged into her Google account from her desktop and noticed that her account had 109 transactions. Also, the total of all the transactions she had made since she first joined Google in 2013 was over 650.
According to bank records, these transactions took place between April 15, 2013, and May 2014, and involved thousands of dollars. Both the bank and Google advised her to sue, but neither returned the money.
As Harvey's lawyer states, the lawsuit is being filed against Google, not only because it was slow to check and protect the woman, but also because the company's poor security allowed third parties to steal and exploit his client's sensitive data.
There has been no official announcement from the company on the matter, except that Google will stop automatic malware detection and will assign specialized employees to check applications and updates uploaded to the Play Store.
