WestJet airline customers suffered a data breach Wednesday night caused by a technical error that exposed their personal information.
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“We continue to actively investigate the cause of this issue. We take our customers’ privacy very seriously and will continue to provide updates,” confirmed Denise Kenny, public relations for the airline, to the Journal.
According to WestJet, only customers using its application were victims of this leak, which lasted for almost 40 minutes on Wednesday evening.
“worrying”
The vast majority of information disclosed is the customer’s name, phone number, address, email address, date of birth, and money earned in points for WestJet travel.
“When I opened my app, I had access to information from about 30 people I didn’t know from across Canada,” said Ronald Brisson of Blainville on Wednesday.
With kind approval
Blainville resident Ronald Brisson, victim of the WestJet leak.
The latter also saw his data disclosed for all to see on Wednesday.
“It’s worrying because you don’t know whose hands my information will fall into. After that, fraud can occur,” says Mr Brisson.
According to our information, however, the customer’s bank details were not disclosed.
A “computer failure”
At the time of this writing, WestJet has not disclosed the number of people affected by this data breach.
“A technical issue affecting customer profiles in the WestJet app has been identified,” said Denise Kenny, without giving further details.
Ms Kenny also did not reveal whether the data breach was unique to Canada.
On social media, Le Journal found dozens of posts from airline customers who complained about the leak on Wednesday night.
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