MOSCOW, February 22 - RAPSI. The Moscow City Court will hear on March 3 the Consumer Union's appeal against termination of its lawsuit against Megafon mobile service provider over massive text messages leak.

Several thousand text messages sent from the Megafon website leaked into the Internet in July 2011. Although the text messages were soon removed from Russia's leading search engine Yandex some users managed to create bases of the leaked messages and Megafon clients' phone numbers. Generally, about 8,000 text messages were on open access on the Internet and 2,500 phone numbers were exposed due to the leak.
The Consumer Union sued Megafon accusing it of breaching client right to privacy and right to personal data confidentiality.

The defendant, in turn, argued that the leaked information contained no personal data, but only disclosed recipients' phone numbers with no link to their names.

Megafon provided the affected subscribers bonus text messages or free time to make calls as compensation. The scope of compensation depended on the region. Besides, the company allowed its affected clients to choose new phone numbers for free.

A Moscow district court terminated the proceedings in November as the union filed a suit in the interest of an indefinite number of people while the defendant argued that all the affected subscribers had been identified and so they can sue the mobile provider by themselves. The court dropped the suit since the Consumer Union is not allowed to represent people without being duly authorized.

The Consumer Union said the court judgment was based on formal grounds and challenged it in a higher court.

The Moscow Commercial Court held Megafon liable for text message leak in August 2011 at the watchdog's request and fined it 30,000 rubles ($1,000).

An appeals court later upheld the decision.

The Investigative Committee also decided to look into the incident.