OAN Staff Abril Elfi
11:21 AM – Monday, March 10, 2025
The state of New York has alleged that the National General unit of Allstate (ALL.N) failed to disclose a major data breach, exposing customers’ driver license numbers.
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The state’s attorney general also argued that Allstate had not developed reasonable safeguards to protect drivers’ private information.
On Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James officially filed the lawsuit in court.
She claimed that the National General’s poor data security is what led to breaches in 2020 and 2021. During that time, hackers reportedly targeted their online auto insurance quoting tools and accessed license numbers of over 165,000 New Yorkers — 199,000 customers overall.
According to the suit, National General is accused of failing to notify affected customers and New York agencies about the first breach, which occurred between August and November of 2020. It also allegedly took three months to uncover the second breach, in January 2021.
James argued that National General violated the state’s Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act after failing to protect customer information. She went on to accuse the company of violating state consumer protection laws by misleading customers about its data security practices.
The lawsuit has asked for civil fines of $5,000 per violation.
In January of 2021, Allstate bought National General for around $4 billion.
Additionally, in January, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also announced that Texas was suing “Allstate and its subsidiary, Arity, for unlawfully collecting, using, and selling data about the location and movement of Texans’ cell phones through secretly embedded software in mobile apps. Texans deserve better, and we will hold all these companies accountable.”
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