For Allianz Life, July ended with a gut punch. The U.S. insurance giant admitted that hackers had slipped into one of its cloud-stored customer databases and made off with personal details belonging to most of its 1.4 million customers. The company didn’t say exactly how many were hit, but the independent breach notification site Have I Been Pwned filled in the blank this week: 1.1 million.
Fans who have stared at a frozen Ticketmaster page only to see “sold out” flashing back minutes later know the frustration. Now, the Federal Trade Commission says that frustration wasn’t always bad luck. It was, at least in part, the work of a Maryland-based ticket broker accused of gaming the system on a massive scale.
Qantas Airways has been hit with a record penalty of $58.6 million (AUD 90 million) after illegally sacking nearly 2,000 ground staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision that a Federal Court judge said was more about protecting profits than people.
California’s ambitious climate disclosure laws just dodged a major legal roadblock. On August 13, 2025, a federal judge in Los Angeles refused to press pause on the state’s landmark Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (SB 253) and Climate-Related Financial Risk Act (SB 261). Translation: businesses caught by these rules should brace themselves, the countdown to 2026 compliance is officially on.
Google has admitted to engaging in anti-competitive conduct in Australia, following a long-running investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The tech giant acknowledged that, between December 2019 and March 2021, it reached restrictive agreements with Telstra and Optus requiring that Android phones sold by the carriers only pre-install Google Search, shutting out rival providers.
The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) has reached a $2 million settlement with Healthplex after finding the dental insurance management company violated the state’s cybersecurity regulation, enabling a late-2021 phishing attack that compromised sensitive personal and health information for tens of thousands of consumers.
Mercer Super, one of Australia’s largest superannuation funds, is facing fresh legal trouble after the corporate regulator accused it of a pattern of systemic failures, the kind that can quietly erode trust in a sector meant to safeguard Australians’ retirement savings.