Tesla sued over leak to business newspaper

Tesla Motors Inc. faces a proposed class action over an apparent data breach the automaker said was caused when two employees sent information to German business newspaper Handelsblatt, reports Kelsey McCroskey of ClassAction.org.

McCroskey reports, “The 38-page lawsuit says that after German media outlet Handelsblatt informed the electric vehicle maker on May 10 that it had obtained private records relating to Tesla employees, a subsequent investigation revealed that two former Tesla workers had removed certain sensitive data stored in the company’s network and shared it with the foreign business newspaper.

“According to the Maine Attorney General’s office, the information of more than 75,000 people was compromised in the Tesla data breach. Fox Business reports that Tesla immediately took legal action against the two former employees allegedly responsible for leaking the sensitive information to Handelsblatt.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.