Wellingtonians have personal information captured by hackers

Friday, 6 July 2018

Residents of Wellington and Waikato have been caught in an international data breach.

The personal data of Wellingtonians has been captured in a global data breach.

It has been revealed that hackers broke into the server of Typeform, a low-cost online consultancy tool used by the Wellington City Council, for a half-hour period in June.

If you have provided feedback to council online, your data might have been hacked.

Residents who provided online feedback to the council are affected, and were notified of the breach in an email on Thursday evening.

Personal information including name, email address, residential address, business names, gender and phone numbers were accessed by hackers on June 27.

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The council-issued alert did not specify how many residents were affected.

'Given the nature of the breach, we recommend you watch out for potential phishing scams (emails from unknown recipients requesting information) or spam emails,' an email sent to residents said.

It was recommended any suspect emails be deleted.

The council said it would only use Typeform for future consultations once it was assured of its security.

'We value your submissions and it's very important to us that you have a safe channel through which you can easily and securely share your information.'

In a statement on its website, Typeform said an unknown third party accessed its server and downloaded data on June 27.

The attacker obtained data from its servers collected from users prior to May 3.

Typeform said it ensured the security vulnerability was fixed prior to informing customers.

'We would like to assure you that we take data security and data privacy very seriously, and we are doing everything we can to take actions that will rebuild the trust you placed in us,' the website said.

We’ve had a data breach. If you were affected, you will have received an email from us. Click here to learn more: https://t.co/dFVhn1nAht

We’re here to support you ❤️

— Typeform (@typeform) June 29, 2018

Companies such as Harvey Norman and UK hotel chain Travelodge were also affected by the same attack, along with at least one Australian council and the Tasmanian Electoral Commission.

Waikato residents have also been affected, with Hamilton City Council, Waikato District Council and Waipā District Council notifying 2800 people of the breach on Thursday.