Photo: Toyota
Toyota has recently confirmed a data leak that exposed the information of nearly 300,000 customers, with the company explaining that it hasn’t found any evidence that the details have been misused in any way until now.
More specifically, the Japanese carmaker says the data leak was related to the T-Connect service, with a contractor that worked on the development of the platform accidentally uploading customers’ email addresses online.
The data was exposed between December 2017 and September this year, and Toyota says it discovered that 296,019 email addresses were included in the upload.
As a result, the company says, customers might be targeted with spam and phishing scams, so make sure you double-check each message that lands in your inbox to be sure it’s legit.
Worth knowing, however, is that no sensitive information has been exposed. In other words, names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card details are all safe and haven’t been included in the accidental upload. The email addresses are the only ones that ended up going online, so the security risks aren’t as high as initially believed.
Furthermore, the company says it has thoroughly checked the logs of its servers to see if any third-party access took place while the data was publicly available. It found no evidence of any unauthorized access, but even so, Toyota says customers should keep their eyes on the inbox to block any potential unsolicited email they receive.
The data leak isn’t necessarily alarming, especially because only the email addresses have been exposed. But on the other hand, having your customers being targeted with phishing scams could eventually be a problem, as cybercriminals are turning to more advanced approaches to make sure they trick victims into believing they’re reading legit emails.
If you do receive such an email and can’t tell for sure if it’s a scam or not, the best way to double-check is to search online for more information and to avoid sharing more of your sensitive details on shady links included in the messages.
The data was exposed between December 2017 and September this year, and Toyota says it discovered that 296,019 email addresses were included in the upload.
As a result, the company says, customers might be targeted with spam and phishing scams, so make sure you double-check each message that lands in your inbox to be sure it’s legit.
Worth knowing, however, is that no sensitive information has been exposed. In other words, names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card details are all safe and haven’t been included in the accidental upload. The email addresses are the only ones that ended up going online, so the security risks aren’t as high as initially believed.
Furthermore, the company says it has thoroughly checked the logs of its servers to see if any third-party access took place while the data was publicly available. It found no evidence of any unauthorized access, but even so, Toyota says customers should keep their eyes on the inbox to block any potential unsolicited email they receive.
The data leak isn’t necessarily alarming, especially because only the email addresses have been exposed. But on the other hand, having your customers being targeted with phishing scams could eventually be a problem, as cybercriminals are turning to more advanced approaches to make sure they trick victims into believing they’re reading legit emails.
If you do receive such an email and can’t tell for sure if it’s a scam or not, the best way to double-check is to search online for more information and to avoid sharing more of your sensitive details on shady links included in the messages.
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