An unprotected database belonging to Talanton, a new job posting and searching platform accidentally exposed their database to criminals from May 17 to June 19th. The database included phone numbers and emails of CISOs, CEOs, and government officials including Tommy Hilfiger Japan CEO, Tom Chu and the CTO of the Australian government.
They exposed the personal information of almost 1.6 million employers and job seekers from the USA, India, Israel, UK, France, multiple European countries, Australia, UAE, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Job seekers’ personal details such as phone numbers, email addresses, gender, nationality, residential addresses, designations, current employers, salary expectations, and job seeking status and encrypted passwords of over 50,000 users were leaked.
Although access to the database has been locked down, the damage has been done.
The Take Away
Unfortunately breaches like this are becoming all too common and more are likely in our future. Here are some tips to keeping as much of your data private on sites that require a lot of personal information:
Use a unique password. Often these breaches include a compromise in their password database and you don’t want criminals to gain access to your email or bank accounts by re-using a password with one of these other services.
Use a PO Box as your mailing address whenever possible.Â
Avoid giving out your cell phone number. If you absolutely have to give out a phone number, you can give out a free Google voice number and forward calls to your cell phone or just use it for voicemail.Â
Stay safe out there.
-A