HOUSTON – A Houston man who is an alum of a prestigious East Coast university has pursued legal action on allegations his school e-mail was hacked.
In a lawsuit filed on Aug. 22 in the Houston Division of the Southern District of Texas, Shane Merz claims an unknown individual in Lithuania gained unauthorized access to his Massachusetts Institute of Technology e-mail account almost two years ago.
John Doe purportedly “set up e-mail forwarding so that all of the plaintiff’s MIT account emails would be forwarded to a separate fraudulent e-mail account, mitmaintenance@alumni.com.”
According to Merz, MIT “did not a notification system in place that would notify users when an email address was added or removed or when email forwarding is initiated.” The plaintiff did not learn about the fraudulent e-mail account activity until” last month, the original petition says.
Consequently, the plaintiff seeks unspecified monetary damages.
He is represented by Mark R. Zeidman of the law firm Ferguson Braswell Fraser Kubasta PC in Houston.
Houston Division of the Southern District of Texas Case No. 4:18-CV-2901