The American division of Mercedes-Benz has reported a data breach affecting some of the company’s customers. The incident affected 1.6 million records that included customer names, addresses, email, phone numbers and some information about the vehicles purchased.
The incident reportedly occurred on June 11, 2021 due to unsecured cloud storage. According to the company, the leak affects some customers and potential car buyers who, between January 1, 2014 and June 19, 2017, entered confidential information on the websites of the company and dealers of Mercedez-Benz.
The investigation of the incident is still ongoing, but it is already known that among the leaked data there were such important things as:
- customer credit ratings (people reported them themselves);
- driver’s license numbers;
- social security numbers;
- credit card numbers;
- date of birth.
The company emphasizes that this information was not available for search and was not indexed in search engines: “to view the information, you had to know special programs and tools. An Internet search did not find the information contained in these files. “
Although the leak affects 1.6 million records in total, according to Mercedes-Benz, only about 1,000 customers reported “additional” personal information that was available in the said cloud storage.
All victims are now reporting the incident and the company has already notified the power leak. It is reported that the victims of the incident will be offered two years of free credit monitoring.