VodafoneZiggo warns customers on Wednesday that their personal data may have come out in a data breach. The telecom provider works with market researcher Blauw and outsiders have gained access to personal data at a software supplier of that company. It is not yet clear how many customers’ data may be on the street.
According to Blauw, fourteen partner companies have been affected by the data breach. NS announced on Tuesday that it had warned customers. A spokeswoman for VodafoneZiggo says she is one of the fourteen companies. The provider says it has reported to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) and is conducting further investigation. Efteling, Albert Heijn, Etos, bol.com and Vattenfall are also customers of Blauw, but have said they have not been affected by the data leak.
Blauw received a message on Friday that an unauthorized person had access to the network of the software supplier. On Monday, this supplier confirmed that data had actually been stolen. The company is still investigating exactly which data was stolen or viewed by unauthorized persons. Access to the personal data has now been closed, reports a spokesperson for Blauw. He would not say who the software supplier was or which companies were affected.
According to the spokesman, the number of people whose data had been passed on by those companies to Blauw varies from ‘hundreds of thousands, namely at the NS, to several hundred at the smaller clients’. On Tuesday, Blauw and NS reported to the AP.
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and don’t miss a thing of the stars.
