Afrihost explained the data leak where 18,000 of its ADSL clients’ names and addresses were exposed online
Afrihost informed its clients that their use of Google’s online tools lead to the name and physical address of 18,000 of its ADSL clients become available online for a short while.
MyBroadband received a list of around 18,800 names and addresses of Afrihost ADSL clients, which were downloaded as in Excel format. The list was discovered after a Google search.
Afrihost CEO Gian Visser explained that they used a Google tool to plot a group of managed ADSL line clients on Google Maps, which lead to the details becoming available online.
«We were doing this to research the geographic distribution of these clients to try and improve certain facets of the product, said Visser.
We obviously believed this information was completely private but unfortunately Google indexed this info and the addresses could be found through very specific searches on Google.»
Visser said that as soon as they found this out they removed this information from the Google product they were using. “None of this info is available anymore,” said Visser.
«Regardless of the fact that this information has been removed I’d like to offer my sincere, unreserved apologies – the privacy and security of your information is one of our top priorities – and the fact that this inadvertently happened means we let you down, said Visser.
