ADT employee spied on customers for years through their security cameras, lawsuits claim
Boca Raton FL May 19 2020
Hundreds of customers of ADT Security Services were spied on through security cameras installed inside and outside of their homes, two federal lawsuits filed Monday are claiming.
ADT, headquartered in Boca Raton, “failed to provide rudimentary safeguards” to prevent an employee from gaining remote access to the customers’ cameras over a seven-year period, a news release from the Dallas-based Fears Nachawati Law Firm states.
ADT notified customers of the breaches and then tried to pay them off if they agreed not to reveal them publicly, according to the suits filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale.
“In a frantic effort to mitigate and hide its actions, ADT began a campaign to call all affected account holders and secure a release and confidentiality agreement in exchange for a monetary payment representing a fraction of the value of their claims,” one of the suits says.
ADT said in a statement that it reported to police in April that a former employee gained unauthorized access to accounts of 220 customers in the Dallas area. “We took immediate action and put measures in place to prevent this from happening again,” the statement said. “We deeply regret what happened to the 220 customers affected by this incident and have contacted them to help resolve their concerns. We are supporting law enforcement’s investigation of the former employee and are committed to helping bring justice to those impacted by his improper actions.”
The company said the breaches affected customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, one of its larger markets. ADT serves more than 6 million customers in the United States.
Alexia Preddy and Shana Doty, both of Texas, are named as lead plaintiffs in the suits, which seek class-action status in the expectation that hundreds of other potential victims will also come forward.
Preddy was a teenager when the Dallas-area technician who had installed their indoor security camera granted himself remote access by adding his personal email address to her account, Preddy claims. The employee then used that access nearly 100 times to spy on her and other household members “in their most private and intimate moments,” according to her suit.
Doty was alerted by ADT that the technician had used his access an unknown amount of times to spy on her, her husband and their minor son “in their most private moments,” she claimed.
The lawsuits accuse ADT of failing to fix large vulnerabilities in its ADT Pulse software application, leaving not only the lone Dallas technician but potentially countless other ADT employees with the ability to secretly open locks at homes and view security camera footage, the suit states.
It adds, “The mental and emotional impact this revelation has had on every person receiving these calls from ADT is immeasurable. Moments once believed to be private and inside the sanctity of the home are now voyeuristic entertainment for a third party. And worse, those moments could have been captured, shared with others, or even posted to the internet.”
ADT Pulse is among the most advanced and expensive home security packages offered by ADT. It enables consumers to view their homes remotely and control their homes’ locks and security systems from a mobile application or web browser.
ADT’s investigation revealed that an employee named Telesforo Aviles had access to more than 200 different customers’ ADT Pulse accounts for the last seven years, Doty’s suit says.
“Countless checks could have been in place to prevent or at least stop this conduct,” it said. Instead, the breach was revealed when a customers reported a technical issue and “inadvertently revealed the unwanted third-party access.”
On its website, ADT posted a statement about the incident and included that it asked a court in May to resolve customers’ “outstanding issues” through arbitration. “This administrative legal step will allow customers to take advantage of an existing avenue to resolve any outstanding issues by working with an independent, third-party arbiter,” the company said.
The suits each seek more than $5 million plus interest and costs.
They aren’t the first accusations that ADT failed to protect its security systems from unwanted intrusions. In 2017, the company agreed to pay $16 million to settle class actions suits in Illinois, Arizona, Florida and California claiming it systems were vulnerable to hacking because the company failed to encrypt them.
