A federal lawsuit accuses San Antonio-based Visionworks of America Inc. and its chain of more than 700 optical shops of failing to notify 40,000 customers after their data was exposed in a cyberattack.
The suit, filed Dec. 23 in U.S. District Court in San Antonio, alleges Visionworks suffered a data breach on Oct. 10 but didn’t begin notifying customers until last month. The plaintiff, an Arizona customer, is seeking class-action status for the legal claim, which also accuses the company of failing to adequately protect its computer systems.
Visionworks officials were unavailable Thursday for comment on the lawsuit.
Those who conducted the electronic break-in of Visionworks’ systems acquired customers’ names, birth dates, email addresses, addresses and Social Security numbers along with financial and medical data, the suit alleges .
The petition also argues that Visionworks was negligent in protecting data, putting exposed customers at a “present and ongoing risk of fraud and identity theft for many years into the future, if not forever.”