Michelle Reed Quoted on New Scrutiny for Identity Protection Industry

Michelle Reed, a partner in Akin Gump’s litigation and cybersecurity, privacy and data protection practices, has been quoted in the POLITICO Pro article “Identity services face new scrutiny in wake of hacks.”

The article notes that new data breaches, while they are bad news for tens of millions of Americans, have created a booming business for the loosely regulated industry of identity protection, which includes companies selling credit monitoring, identity theft insurance and related services. While these measures all have a stated goal of protecting consumers, the article says it’s often the companies where the breach occurred that end up benefiting by engaging with an identity protection service provider.

Reed, however, doesn’t think companies necessarily have to do this. She said, “They do this not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they think it will mean it will be less likely they have more consumer complaints on their hands, particularly in the form of class action lawsuits.”