Volkswagen AG’s US unit stated a knowledge breach at a vendor impacted greater than 3.3 million clients and potential patrons in North America.
Nearly all these impacted have been present or potential clients of Audi, one of many German automaker’s luxurious manufacturers.
Volkswagen Group of America stated on Friday an unauthorized third celebration obtained restricted private details about clients and patrons from a vendor that its Audi Volkswagen manufacturers and a few US and Canadian sellers used for digital gross sales and advertising.
The info was gathered for gross sales and advertising between 2014 and 2019 and was in an digital file the seller left unsecured.
The firm informed regulators the overwhelming majority of shoppers solely had cellphone numbers and electronic mail addresses doubtlessly impacted by the information breach. In some instances, information additionally consists of details about a automobile bought, leased, or inquired about.
VW stated 90,000 Audi clients and potential patrons had delicate information impacted regarding buy or lease eligibility. VW stated it’ll supply free credit score safety providers to these people.
The delicate information was comprised of driver license numbers in additional than 95 p.c of instances. A small variety of data included extra information like dates of start, Social Security numbers, and account numbers.
The automaker doesn’t imagine delicate info is concerned in Canada.
More than 3.1 million folks affected are within the United States.
VW believes the information was obtained at some level between August 2019 and May of this yr, when the automaker recognized the supply of the incident.
© Thomson Reuters 2021
