TrustBank, which operates the hometown tax donation site Furusato Choice, suffered unauthorized access by a third party, resulting in the leak of more than 4.45 million records of personal information, including names and addresses. CHANGE Holdings shares have fallen for 3 consecutive days.
TrustBank, which operates Furusato Choice, announced on the 21st that unauthorized access by a third party had resulted in 4,454,097 records of personal information being leaked externally. The leak occurred on the 17th. An anomaly was detected during a server inspection on the morning of the 19th, and related services have been suspended since 3:50 p.m. The leaked information included names, email addresses, postal addresses, telephone numbers, hashed passwords and estimated donation tax deductions. The company completed its report to the Personal Information Protection Commission by the 20th and plans to notify police of the damage on the 21st.
In market trading, CHANGE Holdings shares fell to ¥952, down ¥33 from the previous day, in morning trading on the 21st, marking a decline for the third consecutive trading day. Concern that a prolonged service suspension could lead to members leaving and a decline in the number of donations has been cited as a selling factor. Furusato Choice is one of Japan's largest intermediary sites, partnering with municipalities nationwide, and the suspension is expected to affect donation applications, the selection of return gifts and the issuance of donation certificates.
The company said it would strengthen its security measures, monitoring and information-management systems in response to the incident, making the effectiveness of its measures to prevent recurrence and its accountability key issues. Separately, NEC has also been found to have suffered an information leak from a cyberattack via an outsourced service provider, again raising questions about corporate information-management systems.