Law360 Canada (January 26, 2023, 6:39 AM EST) -- Appeal by Owsianik, on behalf of identified class, from refusal of motion judge to certify intrusion upon seclusion claim against Equifax Canada Co. and Equifax Inc. (Equifax). Owsianik pled that Equifax’s failure to take appropriate steps to guard against unauthorized access to sensitive financial information in the database constituted an intentional or reckless intrusion upon her privacy. Equifax and related companies, collectively referred to as Equifax, operated around the world providing credit reporting services and credit protection services to customers. For the purposes of providing credit ratings to its customers, Equifax collected and aggregated financial and other information relating to millions of individuals and various corporate entities (consumers). In addition to providing credit ratings, Equifax also provided clients with services intended to protect those clients from fraud, identity theft and other financial crimes. Between mid-May and late July 2017, hackers gained unauthorized access to the personal information stored by Equifax. The information accessed included individuals’ social insurance numbers, names, dates of birth, addresses, driver’s licence numbers, credit card numbers, email addresses and passwords. Equifax made the breach public in September 2017. The Statement of Claim (SOC) alleged, among others, that Equifax knew its database was a prime target for cybercriminals, that Equifax represented, publicly and in its contract with clients, that it maintained strict security safeguards to its database and that Equifax was fully aware of the inadequacies in its system....