Fifteen days after its most recent customer data breach in Japan, Toyota Australia confirmed that the details of nearly 3,000 local owners were exposed in the tech attack.
Japanese car giant Toyota has confirmed that customers in Australia have been caught up in last month’s data breach of more than 2 million customers worldwide.
Toyota Australia today confirmed that hackers accessed the data of approximately 2,800 local customers.
It is Toyota Japan’s second major data breach in six months; last year the personal data of more than 300,000 customers was accessed.
News agency Reuters reports that in the latest hack, the vehicle data of 2.15 million Toyota customers in Japan (almost all owners who have subscribed to the company’s cloud services since 2012) had been “publicly available for a decade due to human error.
After initially saying that Toyota customers in Australia were not affected, the company has since made a U-turn.
However, today Toyota Australia issued the following statement: “On May 12, 2023, Toyota Motor Corporation confirmed that vehicle data of some users in Japan had been made publicly accessible due to a database configuration error. cloud based.
“At the time of that notification, we understood that Australian data was not included but, after continued investigation, we now know that a number of Australian registries have been affected.
“Our investigations have found no evidence that the data was accessed, and we have concluded that the probability that it was accessed by a third party is extremely low.
“While the data may include vehicle information, as well as some personal information, such as names and some contact information, personal financial details are not included.
“Toyota Australia recognizes the concern this may cause our customers, and we are working to contact those affected directly to inform them of the situation and detail the measures we have taken to ensure the security of our systems and their data.
“We remain in contact with Toyota’s Japan head office and will provide updates should additional information become available.”
Any Toyota customer who has signed up for the company’s ‘cloud-based’ services or data tracking can contact Toyota customer service to see if and how they are affected. calling 1800 869 682.
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