If you are a typical Android smartphone user who knows about brands like Samsung and Google, Fairphone might be unfamiliar to you. However, that doesn’t change the fact that it is one of the big names in the sustainable smartphone market. Last year, the company entered the wearables market by launching Fairbuds. The launch came a few days after reports about the company expanding into more markets were circulating online. Well, Fairphone recently found itself in an unusual situation after accidentally leaking the personal data of its beta testers.
A misconfigured form on the Fairphone forum resulted in a data leak of many beta testers
As PhoneArena reported, the data leak “stemmed from a misconfigured online form” used by Fairphone for a beta testing survey. Apparently, the details of beta testers were visible to others. This breach has reportedly affected 24 beta testers, revealing personal data, such as names, home addresses, phone ownership details, email addresses, telecom operators, and IMEI numbers.
Fairphone shared the details of the data leak in an email sent to affected users, which a user later posted in a Fairphone community forum. Per the email, the company identified the issue on March 4th at around 4:00 PM. It then rectified the misconfigured form and secured the user data.
The company has also assured that “no one outside this group had access” to the above data. In other words, Fairphone didn’t find any evidence of anyone misusing the data exposed in the leak. The company also advised affected beta testers to stay vigilant against any unusual activity, suspicious links, or unsolicited emails or texts requesting personal information.
The company further made a silly mistake
While the company tried to mitigate the situation, it sent the email to the group using the “reply all” feature. This minor mistake by Fairphone further exposed the email addresses of all affected users, doubling the data leak. No wonder, users were frustrated, with one forum user even calling it a “rookie mistake.“ Moreover, the company has further assured users noting that it will “ensure that such incidents do not recur.“
