Click here to read the full article.
Ariana Grande has filed a lawsuit against anonymous hackers, claiming that they gained backdoor access to devices that led to the leak of unreleased songs and footage from recording sessions and music videos.
The suit,
filed on Monday in Los Angeles and reviewed by Variety, targets a group of unnamed John Does for phishing scams and hacking schemes that have caused “unlawful and egregious theft, dissemination, and exploitation of unreleased content.” Grande’s legal team outlines a pattern of illegal behavior in which hackers targeted the personal digital accounts of photographers and producers who worked closely with her and subsequently sold the data and content for “significant sums of money.”
Grande is suing unnamed John Does to “uncover the identities of these currently unknown and unscrupulous individuals in order to hold them accountable for their invasive and reprehensible conduct.” The suit states that “it is imperative to Ms. Grande to ensure — on behalf of herself and others — that such conduct is deterred to the fullest extent possible.”
The singer’s suit asserts that hundreds of leaks have occurred since she made her music debut in 2011. It claims that in 2019, hackers acquired the login for a Dropbox account that belonged to a photographer who had worked with Grande. The following year, the defendants hacked into the mobile device of a producer who had collaborated with Grande and accessed unreleased masters and demos and footage from recording sessions. In 2023 alone, hackers obtained access to 45 of her unreleased songs and leaked them.
Additionally, the suit claims that in 2024, hackers created a Gmail account and domain name impersonating a photographer to get a digital technician to send unreleased photos that belonged to Grande.
A representative for Grande did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for additional comment.
