Class Action Against Verisign Certified

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

23 May 2006

It emerged last week that a Santa Clara Superior Court has certified a nationwide class of potentially 400,000 class members against VeriSign, the nation's largest provider of Internet security certificates, for violation of California's unfair competition and deceptive business practices law related to sale of its security software.

The lead plaintiff, Southeast Texas Medical Associates, alleges that VeriSign sells two versions of its security certificates, Secure Site and Secure Site Pro, and that in its advertising VeriSign represents that its Secure site Pro certificate provides a much higher level of Internet security than its less expensive Secure Site certificate, which is not true.

According to STMA, the company charges $546.00 more for this higher level of security when in fact there is no practical difference between the security provided by the two certificates. The plaintiff further alleged that because of these false and misleading ads, VeriSign has been able to "improperly" extract a $546.00 premium from thousands of businesses throughout California and the nation for little or no additional value.

With the Court's certification of this class of Internet users, VeriSign faces allegations of false and misleading advertising and must answer questions about the nature and levels of security that it claims are provided by its security certificates.

Marc E. Gravely, counsel for the plaintiff, told internetnews.com that the lawsuit requests "that class member be repaid for what they were mislead about, and we'll also request injunctive relief."

He added:

"We are also requesting that VeriSign be ordered to give back all the money."

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