Toyota: The data of 2.15 million vehicles of its customers in Japan was leaked

Toyota has announced that the data of 2.15 million of its car owners in Japan, or nearly the entire customer base signed up to its main cloud service platforms since 2012, was publicly available for a decade due to human error.

The announcement of the leak, which also affects Lexus customers, comes as the world’s biggest carmaker by sales pushes vehicle connectivity and cloud data management, features seen as critical to the development of autonomous driving and other functions that make use of artificial intelligence.

The leak, which began in November 2013 and lasted until mid-April last year, was caused by human error, making the cloud system accessible publicly rather than privately, a Toyota spokesman said. Since the leak, details such as the location of the vehicles and the identification numbers of the devices on the vehicles may have been leaked, but there have been no reports of malicious use yet according to the company.

There were insufficient active detection mechanisms and activities to assess what things were leaked,

the spokesperson said in response to why it took time for the company to realize the problem.

Toyota said it will introduce a system to control cloud settings, create a system to continuously monitor settings and thoroughly train employees on data management rules.

The leak concerns customers signed up to the T-Connect service which provides a wide range of services including AI voice driving support, automatic connection to call centers to manage vehicles and emergency support for situations such as road accidents or sudden illnesses . It also concerns users of G-Link, a similar service for owners of Lexus cars.

Japan’s Personal Information Protection Commission has been made aware of the incident, one of its officials said, but declined to elaborate, in line with its practice of not commenting on individual incidents.

Toyota said steps have been taken to block external access to the data after discovering the issue and conducting an investigation across all cloud environments managed by Toyota Connected.

The incident adds to a series of challenges facing the Koji Satowho took over as CEO of the Japanese automaker on April 1 from Akio Toyoda, grandson of the company’s founder.

Since Sato took over, Toyota has admitted safety testing problems at its Daihatsu subsidiary and has accepted a proposal from three European asset managers to improve its climate change practices.