Tax authority hack: 250 victims sue French state
Following the theft of tax data affecting more than 600,000 people, 250 victims are launching collective legal action against the state to seek compensation.
Collective legal action following massive DGFIP hack
According to franceinfo - Justice, some 250 victims of the hack on the Directorate-General of Public Finance (DGFIP) have grouped together to file a complaint against the state, arguing that their personal data was not sufficiently protected.
One of the complainants, who agreed to meet France Télévisions teams without disclosing either his identity or place of residence, described the notification received on 19 August last: a message from DGFIP titled "Unauthorised consultation of your tax information". "When I saw that, I knew that was it, I was among the 600-odd thousand who were stolen", he said.
Sensitive data in the hands of malicious actors
The DGFIP message detailed precisely the compromised information: tax identification, civil status, postal, telephone and electronic contact details, tax and family situation, number of shares, reference tax income, source deduction rate, and the entirety of all email exchanges with the administration. "All these exchanges, they are in the hands of people who must necessarily have malicious intentions", the victim stated.
To illustrate his anger, he used the metaphor of a keyring: "Somewhere, I give my keyring to the state. The state says: I have rules. With this keyring, I come to your house and I take what is owed to me. And then, in fact, what they're telling me is, sorry, but in fact, someone came to our house, made copies of the keyrings, and left. Our sincere apologies."
Collective complaint for moral and material damages
The apologies expressed last week by the Minister for the Economy were not sufficient to appease the victims. Maître Jérémy Riche, barrister at the Béziers Bar (Hérault), is leading this grouped legal action with the objective of obtaining compensation. "The full scope of material damages is not yet known since attempted scams, break-ins or assaults will indeed appear or be realised much later", he stated. "On the other hand, we can already say that there is moral damage in the form of anxiety. You could very well fear being mugged, assaulted or defrauded."
The main legal difficulty will lie in establishing the causal link between any future fraud and the hack that occurred this summer. The Finance Ministry has so far declined to respond to this collective legal action.
Source: franceinfo - Justice