Data leaks are getting very common. Sometimes it happens simply due to the negligence of authorities and sometimes due to smart hackers. Well, the Folksam data leak is due to the former reason. The largest insurance company in Sweden leaked the data of 1 Mn users by accident and provided them to tech companies. The leak was reported by the company itself on 3rd November.
Details about the leak
According to some reports, the data was shared with biggies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn. At this point, we know that the data was shared by mistake. And Jens Wikstrom, Head of Marketing Folksam made an appeal to these companies to delete the data that they received. He also said that they value privacy and user data and immediately stopped sharing the data once they found out about it.
The leak had a huge amount of sensitive data from their users. This included the banking information, Social Security number, types of insurance bought and more. The company is taking the leak very seriously and says that they will make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Is the user data safe now?
There has been no news or reports by the companies regarding the same. Folksam does say that they haven’t found any company using the data in an improper manner. But, there hasn’t been an official statement stating that the 3rd party companies have deleted the data. Assuming that the biggest tech companies in the world keep their Ethics strong, the user data will be safe.
But, the concern is, why do so many data leaks happen? Don’t companies follow the news and see headlines about user data getting leaked due to negligence? If they do isn’t it obvious that it could happen to them too and they should be completely aware of this. The Zhenhua data leak, the 235 million users data leak are just some examples of such negligence.
What are your thoughts on the latest Folksam data leak? And do you think user data will ever be safe with companies? Let us know in the comments below. Also, if you found our content informative, do like and share it with your friends.
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