Finnish handset maker Nokia Oyj yesterday said that five of its Taiwanese Web sites were hacked earlier this month, giving hackers access to the personal data of local consumers.
No classified data of Nokia’s local consumers were involved in the incident. No credit card details, ID numbers or medical information were leaked, the company said in a statement.
Nokia said it could not be sure whether a larger number of consumers’ personal data had been leaked in addition to the 170,000, but suspected that about 1.5 million items, including consumers’ transaction records registered to attend company product promotion activities, had been hacked.
The data included consumers’ names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and other information required to participate in Nokia’s marketing activities.
Of the 1.5 million hacked records, less than 7,000 items included passwords, Nokia said, adding that it had sent e-mails and text messages to customers to alert them of the urgency of the cyberattack.
Most of the data had been registered in the company’s database for more than one year, and most data had been stored for seven years, Nokia said.
Nokia apologized for the hacking and warned that customers might receive spam e-mails or text messages sent by hackers.
The Web sites were shut down after hacking activities were detected, and the database stored in the servers was deleted to facilitate system repairing process, the company said, adding that it will not use the database for future marketing activities and information on it will be deleted.
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