A Byron Bay woman is facing a costly legal battle in the United States after hackers used her identity to trade counterfeit sporting goods. Sarah Luke says after accessing her PayPal account, the hackers made a series of fraudulent transactions, leading to lawsuits against her. Ms Luke had been among the many Australians caught up in the Medibank data breach.
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00:00 Sarah Luke is facing a damages bill of over a million dollars US following a series of
00:07 events which she believes began with the compromise of her personal details in the Medibank data
00:13 breach.
00:14 The charges were cyber squatting, trademark infringement, IP infringement, things like
00:19 that that I don't know anything about.
00:22 Medibank has told the ABC that it's not involved because the passwords of its customers were
00:28 never compromised but she believes this information is part of what hackers used to unlock her
00:34 PayPal account and trade in $25,000 worth of fake Adidas and National Basketball Association
00:44 merchandise.
00:45 Within weeks the companies had filed and won lawsuits against Miss Luke in the district
00:52 courts of both Illinois and Florida.
00:56 While experts say the companies would most likely have to register the claims here in
01:01 order to be able to enforce them, Miss Luke says the situation has still been extremely
01:05 stressful and it shows how faulty the systems are to protect people from these types of
01:11 crimes.
01:13 The hackers and the criminals are way ahead of the law.
01:18 So it's an extremely concerning situation and just shows the potential far reaching
01:24 implications of these types of data breaches.
01:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]