Afrihost client data leaked: company apologises and explains

it probably hasn't been a massive scoop because of the speed with which the problem has been admitted and so on
compared to the CoJ etc ...

This is a really big ****up but big ****ups happen and my general view in life is that how companies fix things is of greater importance. The affected customers have a right to be told that they are affected but contacting 18k people does involve some effort and before sending out correspondence they need to properly investigate.
 
if this was City of JHB or Tshwane,MWeb,Openweb, or MTN? would ppl react the same?>
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
It's the customer name and physical address for heavens sake - while not ideal it is information which anyone can pick out of your garbage bin. Unfortunate that the information leaked (I saw it and to be honest would not have been worried if my details were on that list). Most of the customers with a landline would have the same details appear in a phone book. Not sure why people should be upset or go out on a witchhunt now.
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so it wasn't you who discovered the mistake.

Look if they tried to cover it up I'd have cancelled my service and support for them - even though my full contact information is available in half a dozen very public bits of the record - but unlike the CoJ which was giving out far more damaging information they immediately acted on whoever tipped them off. For all we know it could actually have gone entirely undetected but for their admission.
 
rico112 said:
if this was City of JHB or Tshwane,MWeb,Openweb, or MTN? would ppl react the same?>
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if any of those companies acted in the same way on it being discovered that they had a problem I would have exactly the dame view. In fact the disgusting thing about the CoJ was that they ignored a person pointing the problem out to them.
 
AfriMan said:
We're not sure about that - but we have been very open about the issue with MyBB to ensure that they have all the pertinent information to reassure our clients that we will continue to make privacy of personal information a priority.

We messed up, it's true, though :(
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Guess every1 makes mistakes :)
nice1 afrihost for owning up , well done!
 
rico112 said:
if this was City of JHB or Tshwane,MWeb,Openweb, or MTN? would ppl react the same?>
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You can't compare the disclosure of name and address vs the disclosure of invoices, property values, banking details or other financial information etc. Not the same type of data and sensitivity. What was on Afrihost's list of information you could look up in a phone book or find in the trash of thrown away mail.

Only convenient thing is that people now know where Gian lives but even this you could have figured out by other means ;-)
 
AfriMan said:
We haven't just yet - but our management team are currently looking at our options in this regard :(
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cool :) I still trust you guys :) Let's hope you learn from this mistake...
 
froot said:
So my address is on there? :wtf:
:(
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If you have your line with us - chances are it would have been :(

We're truly sorry about this and we assure you everything is being done to ensure that your information is secure.
 
Paul Hjul said:
if any of those companies acted in the same way on it being discovered that they had a problem I would have exactly the dame view. In fact the disgusting thing about the CoJ was that they ignored a person pointing the problem out to them.
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true :) lol Afriost owning up is a big thing.

My aiming is more towards MYBB and the subtle article.
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
It's the customer name and physical address for heavens sake - while not ideal it is information which anyone can pick out of your garbage bin. Unfortunate that the information leaked (I saw it and to be honest would not have been worried if my details were on that list). Most of the customers with a landline would have the same details appear in a phone book. Not sure why people should be upset or go out on a witchhunt now.
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We do acknowledge that this is still poor form on our part and we've let our clients down. While the net is rife with private info, we would have preferred not to have ever been the cause of this.

However we do feel that the information is very unlikely to be used in any meaningful way and that our clients privacy is still protected :(
 
well apparently Google changed their licence agreement and API recently ,
and i got a feeling it could be a Google fault and not afrihost :(
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
It's the customer name and physical address for heavens sake - while not ideal it is information which anyone can pick out of your garbage bin. Unfortunate that the information leaked (I saw it and to be honest would not have been worried if my details were on that list). Most of the customers with a landline would have the same details appear in a phone book. Not sure why people should be upset or go out on a witchhunt now.
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I'm not in the phonebook, and I don't dump my tax/invoices/address/name stuff in the bin.
AfriMan said:
If you have your line with us - chances are it would have been :(
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Yeah my line is with you.
 
Please share this information with Telkom. So next time they do a line install they don't put me on the WRONG EXCHANGE! :(
 
rico112 said:
Guess every1 makes mistakes :)
nice1 afrihost for owning up , well done!
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We're truly sorry that we made this mess-up. Best we can do is own up and take responsibility for the impact and try to reassure our clients that their privacy will remain intact :(
 
Paul Hjul said:
if any of those companies acted in the same way on it being discovered that they had a problem I would have exactly the dame view. In fact the disgusting thing about the CoJ was that they ignored a person pointing the problem out to them.
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We definitely took this very seriously when we became aware of it and we've been completely open and transparent about the issue. We really hope to reassure affected clients that their privacy should not be compromised by this as the data is no longer available and we believe it was difficult to have located without specific prior knowledge :(
 
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