Attorney General Schneiderman: NY Needs a New Law to Prevent Hacks and Curb Identity Theft

The following was statement was issued today by NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Nobody should be forced to worry about the security of their personal information when shopping on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. But the constant barrage of recent hacks and data breaches makes the threat of identity theft all too real.

Just this week, Uber became the latest company to report a breach -- one that my office is investigating. We've seen breaches at Target. T.J. Maxx. Yahoo. Marshalls. eBay. Home Depot. Anthem. And the biggest known breach of Social Security numbers happened just a few months ago at Equifax, exposing the personal information of more than 140 million Americans, including more than 8 million New Yorkers.

These breaches were outrageous -- and preventable. But there’s good news: the NY State legislature can pass my legislation -- the SHIELD Act -- to prevent hacks like these from ever happening again.

New York's data security laws are toothless and outdated. While cybercrime has evolved, our laws have stayed the same. If we had stronger standards in place before the Equifax hack to fix these loopholes, that breach may have been avoided.

We can't afford to wait for Congress to act. It’s up to us here in New York. 

That’s why I'm asking advocates, businesses, and New Yorkers like you to join me in calling on New York’s legislators to pass the SHIELD (Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security) Act to make our state a national leader in data security.

Under this bill, companies would be required to: maintain reasonable safeguards for our data: the more sophisticated the company, the more robust the safeguards; and report breaches that expose our usernames and passwords, biometric data, or private health data -- not just those breaches that expose social security numbers or other financial data.

Data breaches are more frequent than ever. They're jeopardizing our privacy and our financial information. Stopping them is in everyone’s interest. Passing the SHIELD Act will enable my office to hold companies accountable, and make sure New York law finally applies common sense standards to businesses of all different sizes.  

Join me by signing this petition and calling on New York’s legislators to protect your data now -- before the next big hack puts us all at risk of identity theft again.

In solidarity,