Afrihost client data leaked: company apologises and explains

Biscuit1018 said:
I am an Afrihost client but they dont manage my line.

BTW you mention the leak of property values as more severe?
Of course property values are indeed public as is the address and the Deed Holders name
If you own your house (and not via a Trust) there is a lot of info avail)


At the end of the day I would have been peeved if I had been exposed
However the damage seems low...
They apologised
They have hopefully learned their lesson
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We definitely have learned a big lesson here and we'll make sure something like this never happens again :(
 
AfriMan said:
Either way, we regret that the info was shared in any way through us, but we're grateful that nothing very compromising was shared and we believe that exposure was limited :(
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Yep, but also true that no law was breached here. Just a matter of dealing with emotions now. It could have been way worse had other information been included on the DB uploaded to Google.
 
titanium said:
Aside from the breach of privacy, the publication of the list has also given Afrihost's competitors insight as to the extent of Afrihost's bundled DSL subscriber base, along with a shopping list of potential customers to be targeted/persuaded to migrate away.

Definitely a black eye for Afrihost... and I am still waiting for a formal notification of the information breach - would have liked to be informed first before finding this out on a public forum.
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We would have like to have done so as well, but we have not co-ordinated an effort just yet to do so. But at least now we have the opportunity to publicly apologise and discuss the impact of this horrible mistake :(
 
Lord Nikon6 said:
ah well, so since you say it is people with managed lines from afrihost, I know I am on the list. Perhaps some guys from anonymous will come have a beer with me now...been trying to join those guys for ages :D...

To the NSA reading this post, I am only kidding kay...
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I don't think the NSA does beer - I think water and gruel is about as good as the menu gets :(
 
AfriMan said:
I see I missed that thread in my searches - we're truly sorry for the confusion. If we'd have known about it we could have sorted this our earlier :(
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No need to apologise to me:), i wasn't effected :p . You guys are lucky in the sense that it was only names and addresses, it could have been much worse.
 
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House said:
Yep, but also true that no law was breached here. Just a matter of dealing with emotions now. It could have been way worse had other information been included on the DB uploaded to Google.
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We would have never uploaded that kind of info. Firstly, it's of no real use for GIS purposes, and also we would also have been putting very private information at risk. While we didn't expect this particular outcome - we did take precautions :(
 
I can see this happening to a few companies, geomapping is expensive but Google has some "free" tools that can create some amazing reports, in this case the analyst didn't make sure it was set to private. Rookie mistake :P

Anyway my name might still be on that list, not too phased, I was more concerned the time steam announced they had a leak and told you for just in case you need to monitor your credit card transactions

http://store.steampowered.com/news/6761/
 
Bluran said:
I can see this happening to a few companies, geomapping is expensive but Google has some "free" tools that can create some amazing reports, in this case the analyst didn't make sure it was set to private. Rookie mistake :P

Anyway my name might still be on that list, not too phased, I was more concerned the time steam announced they had a leak and told you for just in case you need to monitor your credit card transactions

http://store.steampowered.com/news/6761/
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There's definitely no danger of that. If a database was hacked or compromised - then we would definitely alert clients and take the necessary precautions.

In this case we know exactly what was made available and we do believe that the impact will be minimal if any :(
 
AfriMan said:
I just can't understand why the National School of the Arts is interested in our emails :)
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LOL!!!! still having a sense of humour after the shizz storm you have to deal with, well done. Not that the situation is not serious, but I think you guys are handling it well.

However, if a dodgey eastern european is to show up at my doorstep, I'll send him to Gian's house for tea and biscuits :D
 
Lord Nikon6 said:
LOL!!!! still having a sense of humour after the shizz storm you have to deal with, well done. Not that the situation is not serious, but I think you guys are handling it well.

However, if a dodgey eastern european is to show up at my doorstep, I'll send him to Gian's house for tea and biscuits :D
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I'm sure he'll cook you one of his famous hamburgers. ;)
 
AfriMan said:
We weren't storing the info as such.

We were using Google Maps to plan how to deliver better services to our clients based on their geographical location and this was only clients with managed ADSL lines.

The info was meant to be private as per the tool we used - so we're still investigating how it was made public by Google.

We do sincerely apologise for this and assure our clients that we do believe there will be any impact to them from this :(
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Just upgrade all your clients' speed and you're forgiven!!
 
Mhmm.. I would be on this list too then.

Obvious negligence aside, I like the way this is now being handled. Good luck with writing that email. ;)
 
Could have been worse I guess. Still...there are no second chances in this game - confidence once damaged can never be made truly whole again.

I'm also a bit alarmed at me hearing this from mybb instead of AH.

That being said I am impressed that AH is attempting to analyze customer geographic distributions.

Bluran said:
I can see this happening to a few companies, geomapping is expensive but Google has some "free" tools that can create some amazing reports, in this case the analyst didn't make sure it was set to private. Rookie mistake :P

Anyway my name might still be on that list, not too phased, I was more concerned the time steam announced they had a leak and told you for just in case you need to monitor your credit card transactions

http://store.steampowered.com/news/6761/
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Steam has an option to disable storing of credit card info. (AH I hope your taking notes)
 
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