Reality TV mom Kate sues ex-hubby Jon over hacked emails

Jon Gosselin stole his ex-wife's hard drive and snooped into her email, bank and cellphone accounts, to feed "false, defamatory and unflattering" information about her to a tabloid reporter, according to a federal lawsuit.

The ex, Kate Gosselin, sued Jon and reporter Robert Hoffman on 8/26, claiming they "were paid by various tabloids to supply them with stories painting Kate Gosselin in a poor light." Hoffman allegedly used the information in a book called "Kate Gosselin: How She Fooled the World," which Amazon pulled shortly after publication.

The pair starred in a TLC reality show, "Jon & Kate Plus 8," about their lives as parents of twins and sextuplets. They filed for divorce in June 2009.

Around the time they separated, Kate says Jon "began accessing [her] password-protected email account without her authorization." She says he also broke into her online bank accounts and her cellphone without permission and "stole a hard drive from [her] house, which contained protected, private and confidential material."

Hoffman "falsely claimed in certain publications that he recovered the data from Kate's computer by digging through her trash that he found on the street,” Kate saus.  But she says there was no way he could have gleaned all that personal information "while engaging in trash-picking endeavors."

ThreatWatch is a regularly updated catalog of data breaches successfully striking every sector of the globe, as reported by journalists, researchers and the victims themselves.