After years of violation, Ariana Grande is finally suing hackers who keep targeting her and her collaborators.
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The lawsuit was filed on July 27 in Los Angeles, Variety reported. The outlet also reviewed the suit, which targets a group of John Does for phishing and hacking scams that have caused “unlawful and egregious theft, dissemination, and exploitation of unreleased content.”
According to Grande’s legal team, the hackers have shown a pattern of illegal behavior where they go after the personal accounts of photographers and producers who have worked with the singer.
The hackers then turned around and sold the data and content for “significant sums of money.”
Grande is suing the 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.”
Per the lawsuit, “it is imperative to Ms. Grande to ensure — on behalf of herself and others — that such conduct is deterred to the fullest extent possible.”
Hundreds of leaks have taken place since Grande’s musical debut in 2011, the lawsuit states.
In 2019, they accessed the Dropbox of a photographer working with Grande. The following year, they hacked the mobile device of a producer, accessing unreleased demos and masters. Forty-five unreleased tracks were uncovered and leaked by the hackers in 2023.
And in 2024, hackers created a fake Gmail account and domain name to impersonate a photographer and get a digital technician to send unreleased photos of Grande.
“Artists deserve the right to control how and when their art is shared with the world. The unlawful theft and distribution of creative work undermines that right and should not be tolerated,” a source close to Grande told People.
During an interview on the Zach Sang Show to promote her album Eternal Sunshine, Grande directly addressed the leaks.
While speaking about Max Martin, who produced an unreleased track called “Fantasize” that was leaked in 2023, she alluded to the lawsuits.
“We were — before I left for Wicked — a few studio sessions that I did which are all over TikTok, thank you so much, I’ll see you in jail. Literally,” she said. “Those were all written for a TV show, for something that was not for me, so ‘Fantasize’ comes out, crazy, was stolen … these pirates, crooks, illegal!”