Volkswagen: data from 3.3 million North American customers exposed

A new victim of a computer hack, the German automaker Volkswagen said on Friday that a data breach at one of its suppliers had exposed the information of more than 3.3 million people in North America.

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“We recently discovered that an unauthorized third party had obtained personal information (...) about customers and potential customers from a supplier used by Audi, Volkswagen and certain dealers in the United States and Canada for activities online sales and marketing, ”

said the company's American subsidiary in a message sent to AFP. The information concerned was retrieved between 2014 and 2019 and was stored on an unprotected electronic file of this supplier, of which Volkswagen did not give the name.

The manufacturer estimates that sensitive information used for a purchase or a loan, the driving license number in particular, of approximately 90,000 customers or potential customers of Audi in the United States has been exposed.

Volkswagen plans to provide them with free protection against the use of their data for purchases or loans.

Less sensitive information - names, addresses, phone numbers, emails - of around 3.1 million Audi customers in the United States and 163,000 in Canada are also affected.

As well as the data of approximately 3,300 Volkswagen customers in the United States.

The group claims to be in the process of contacting the people concerned and having notified the competent authorities.

Series of cyber attacks

Several American companies have been victims in recent weeks of computer attacks, of varying magnitude.

Fast food giant McDonald's said on Friday that customer data in South Korea and Taiwan had been exposed during a data breach.

Meat giant JBS, for its part, was forced to pay a ransom of $ 11 million in bitcoin in early June due to a cyber attack.

A few weeks earlier, Colonial Pipeline, which transports nearly 45% of the fuel consumed on the east coast of the United States, had to pay $ 4.4 million to hackers, a ransom then partially recovered by the American authorities.