Toyota (TM) apologizes after additional data breach, expands investigation

Toyota (NYSE: TM) issued an apology Wednesday after the Japanese automaker announced an investigation into the May 12th data leak revealed that additional information on customers in some countries in Oceania and Asia, excluding Japan, may have been left publicly accessible from October 2016 to May 2023.

“As we believe that this incident was also caused by insufficient dissemination and enforcement of data handling rules, since our last announcement, we have implemented a system to monitor cloud configurations,” Toyota said in a statement.

Customer information that may have been accessible externally included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and vehicle identification and registration numbers, the company said.

This latest incident follows an announcement earlier this month that the vehicle data of 2.15 million users in Japan, almost all their customers who signed up for their main cloud service platforms since 2012, had been out in the open for a whole decade because of a human mistake.

The company did not disclose how many customers were affected by this latest incident, in which countries they are located exactly, or whether customers of its luxury Lexus brand were affected.

Toyota said it had also investigated whether there were any third-party copies or use of its customer data and found no evidence of such use, adding vehicle location and credit card information were not included in the incident.

According to the spokesperson, the company initially discovered the incident by accident during inspections that began on April 7. The revelation was made public earlier this month.

Shares of TM are up 0.20% in pre-market trading on Wednesday.

By Michael Elkins | [email protected]

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