Connected Car
Taiwanese authorities have fined car rental and ridesharing giant iRent after TechCrunch revealed the company was spilling customers’ data and identity documents onto the open web for months. According to local media reports, iRent, which is owned by Taiwanese auto conglomerate Hotai Motor, received two separate fines for failing to adequately protect the data of more than 400,000 customers. The company was also ordered to improve its security by the end of February or face further fines. Security researcher Anurag Sen found the exposed database, but iRent took a week — and the swift intervention of the Taiwanese government — to respond. A short time after TechCrunch alerted Taiwan’s digital ministry about the company’s security lapse, the exposed database was secured.