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

by Chris Teague

Published: May 12th, 2023

toyota japan admits to exposing millions of customers data to the open internet for

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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Chris Teague

Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.

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5 of 8 comments

IBx1 on May 12, 2023

Does it make it any better knowing all that data about you is normally simply sold to whoever has money and asks to buy it?

Like Reply
- Sayahh on May 12, 2023
  
  That's why everyone should be able to opt out (better yet, make that the default) and have it deleted. Toyota knows and cares about data and tech like the FCC cares about stopping robocalls and spoofed numbers.
  
  Like
Lou_BC on May 12, 2023

I wonder if my truck is telling GM that I've jumped it and blown donuts with it? Or have crawled through some nasty sh!t and gotten stuck?

Like Reply
- See 1 previous
- MaintenanceCosts on May 12, 2023
  
  Both the jump and the donuts are perfectly visible in the telemetry data. Getting stuck, not necessarily.
  
  1
- Jeff S on May 14, 2023
  
  Big brother is watching us. This doesn't surprise me especially when our own smart phones track us.
  
  Like

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