Toyota Japan Admits to Exposing Millions of Customers' Data to the Open Internet for Years

Toyota was far behind the times when it came to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, with some at the company citing concerns around owners’ privacy as a significant speedbump to implementing the tech. Now, it seems those concerns didn’t completely extend to other areas of the automaker’s business. It recently apologized for leaving millions of owners’ data on the internet for several years.

Toyota will reach out to more than two million customers after discovering that data was left on the public internet for a decade. Blaming a “cloud misconfiguration,” Toyota Japan said that customers’ email addresses, vehicle chassis and computing numbers, location data, and video from onboard cameras were left online and only recently discovered by the company.

The flub only affects Japanese owners, so everyone else can breathe easily. Even so, it’s not the first time Toyota has admitted to loose data handling practices. Last year, the company said it had exposed 300,000 customer email addresses for several years. Earlier this year, a data security researcher found a vulnerability in Toyota’s supplier portal that exposed data on 14,000 of the automaker’s suppliers. 

While it’s good news that this particular issue doesn’t affect Americans, every new car on the road today performs some degree of data collection. Automakers use the data to improve their products, but some owners have reported being denied warranty claims and other issues due to data collected on their driving behavior. This might be one situation where reading the fine print pays off. 

[Image: Toyota]

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