The lawsuit seeks damages as well as an accounting by Sears to determine whether the Web site was misused by criminals. It was filed on Friday by New Jersey resident Christine Desantis, who is represented by KamberEdelson, a technology law firm. KamberEdelson is best known for its recent settlement with social networking site Facebook over its sending of unwanted text messages to recycled cell-phone numbers.
"It's a pretty simple case," said Jay Edelson, a partner with the Chicago-based law firm. "Sears decided to put private information of its customers up on the Web site and make it publicly available. They did it without telling their customers that it was going to happen ... and they really did it for their own financial reasons."
Manage My Home is a community portal where Sears shoppers can download product manuals, find product tips, and get home renovation ideas. The Web site had a feature called "Find your products" that ostensibly was designed to help users look up past purchases.
Last Thursday, researchers at security vendor CA pointed out that the feature could be used to look up the purchase history of any Sears customer, an apparent violation of the company's privacy policy.
Technorati Tags: sears, privacy policy, data security
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