F500 Electric-Gas Utilities · Utilities: Gas and Electric · No confirmed finding (unverified, not clean)
Duke Energy
Headline
Nothing confirmed
A federal appeals court has held that a city-owned utility's collection of smart-meter data at fifteen-minute intervals is a Fourth Amendment search, though a reasonable one on those facts…
Not independently verified. Verification status: Unverified - heuristic first draft. Publish state: draft unverified.
What this pass recorded. A federal appeals court has held that a city-owned utility's collection of smart-meter data at fifteen-minute intervals is a Fourth Amendment search, though a reasonable one on those facts (Naperville Smart Meter Awareness v. City of Naperville, No. 16-3766 (7th Cir. Aug. 16, 2018)); the Fourth Amendment constrains government utilities, not directly a private utility like Duke. Duke is one of the largest US utilities, serving the Carolinas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, and like every utility in this tracker its customers cannot switch providers - which removes every market mechanism consumer privacy law assumes exists. Company-specific: a May 2024 breach exposing customer names, account numbers and Social Security numbers led to seven lawsuits that Duke settled in 2025 on undisclosed terms while denying that state-law-defined PII was exposed. Recommend a follow-up on collection interval, retention period and the written law enforcement request policy, which are the three questions that actually determine a household's exposure.
- Severity
- Evidence tierUnassigned
- Claims confirmed
- Last verified2026-08-04
Primary source. None recorded — Unverified - heuristic first draft.
Terms
Arbitration
Not independently confirmed this pass — standard binding arbitration + class action waiver expected for individual customer agreements.
Data sharing
CONFIRMED, SETTLED 2024 BREACH: Duke Energy (serving 8.6 million electric customers across the Carolinas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, plus 1.7 million natural gas customers) disclosed a May 2024 data breach exposing customer names, account numbers, emails, Tax IDs, and Social Security numbers — court records describe the data being used by cybercriminals to open new financial accounts, take out loans, obtain government benefits, and acquire fraudulent driver's licenses in victims' names. Duke settled the resulting class action (a W.D.N.C. case led by plaintiff Matthew Saunders - exact caption not verified - plus SIX OTHER related cases) in 2025, with at least 100 class members claiming combined damages over $5 million; settlement terms were not publicly disclosed. NOTABLY, Duke Energy's own spokesperson maintained that its 'thorough investigation revealed that no customer's personally identifiable information, AS DEFINED BY STATE LAW, was exposed' — a genuinely disputed characterization, similar to the Erie Insurance pattern documented elsewhere in this tracker, where the settling company disputes the underlying premise of the claims it settled.
Fees and billing
Not itemized this pass.
Contacts
Privacy contact. Not recorded.
Legal notice. Not verified this pass. If publicly traded: SEC Form 10-K cover page gives the official corporate address; the Secretary of State business-entity search in the state of incorporation gives the registered agent, which must accept service. If private: the state registered agent is usually the only reliable route.
Mailing address. Not recorded.
Evidence
No claims have been itemized for this row yet.
No sources are on file for this row yet.
Source vault
Link status: Candidate - not yet fetched
| Document | Last fetch | |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy policy duke-energy.com/legal/privacy | Not fetched yet | NO (HTML only) |
| Terms of service duke-energy.com/legal/terms-of-use | Not fetched yet | NO (HTML only) |
| Website No URL recorded | Not fetched yet | — |
| Primary source No URL recorded Verification: Unverified - heuristic first draft | Not fetched yet | — |
Enforcement
No enforcement actions are linked to this row.
State statute
No HQ state on file, so no state statute applies by headquarters.