Toyota says about 296,000 pieces of customer info possibly leaked

Toyota Motor Corp said on Friday it had discovered about 296,000 pieces of customer information from its T-Connect service might have been leaked.

Toyota said 296,019 email addresses and customer numbers of those using T-Connect, a telematics service that connects vehicles via a network, were potentially leaked. The affected customers are individuals who signed up to the service's website using their email addresses since July 2017.

A third-party access could not be confirmed from the access history of the data server where the information was stored based on security experts' investigation, Toyota said in a statement.

At the same time, it said third-party access "could not be completely ruled out".

There was no possibility, though, that users' sensitive personal information, such as names, phone numbers or credit card information, were leaked, Toyota said.

The Japanese automaker did not confirm cases of the information being misused but cautioned there is a possibility of spamming, phishing scams and unsolicited email messages being sent to the users' email addresses.

The automaker said a contractor that developed the T-Connect website accidentally uploaded parts of the source code with public settings from December 2017 until September 15 this year.