As connected cars become globally mainstream, Toyota has apologized after making public partial data of millions of customers held for a decade “due to misconfiguration of the cloud environment”. The automaker said it will notify about 2.15 million customers in Japan whose personal and vehicle information was exposed on the web from November 6, 2013, to April 17, 2023.
The exposed data includes registered email addresses, vehicle-unique chassis and navigation terminal numbers, the location of vehicles and what time they were, and video from the vehicle’s “drive recorder”.
“After discovering this matter, we have implemented measures to block access from outside, but we are continuing to investigate, including across all cloud environments. Apologize
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The company is sending an apology and information to the registered email addresses of individual customers whose in-vehicle terminal ID, chassis number, vehicle location information and timings may have been leaked.
“In addition, we will set up a dedicated call center to answer questions and concerns from customers,” the Japanese giant said. The company said that the main reason for this incident was insufficient interpretation and thoroughness of the rules for data management.
“This time, customer information that is viewable from outside will not identify the customer based solely on this data, even if accessed from outside,” it said in a statement.
Since the discovery of this matter, “we have not confirmed any secondary use of Customer Information on the Internet by any third party, or whether there are any copies remaining in respect of Customer Information that are viewable from the outside “