According to Bloomberg News, Robinhood Markets Inc’s clients those who are brushing aside the data breach are unaware or not being able to assess how even the smallest details can divulge their financial information to hackers.
Mark Newman, who is a Robinhood trader, 54 years old hailing from southeastern Arkansas Monday received a notice stating that his email address has been exposed. This happened after the personal information of more than 7 million users was stolen by a hacker.
Brittany Wedd hailing from Hagerstown in Maryland has a similar opinion and said it has become a way of life and risk while doing business online. The customer is also fearing that there might be a larger cybersecurity lapse, but is, however, not concerned about the exposed email addresses. According to the customer, many customers already have their email addresses exposed and publicly online.
Bloomberg News also reports that cybersecurity experts state that being indifferent to such threats can be dangerous. Few customers have grown used to such hacks because they say that they have already divulged their social security number and their bank account details to social media platforms like Google, Facebook, and Robinhood, which is the most private of any data that they can have.
Robinhood says that it thinks that Social Security numbers, bank accounts, or numbers of debit cards have not been exposed in the latest data breach, nor have the customers suffered from any financial losses. However, customers can still be in trouble if the less private information falls into the wrong hands from the right sources. The reason is that thieves will be able to collect information about their prospective targets.
Citing an instance and example, Mark McCreary, the co-chair of the data and privacy security practices associated with Fox Rothschild, a law firm says that if you receive a mail-in which it has been mentioned that your Chase card is having a problem and you need to log in and fix the problem if you do not have a Chase card, you will probably ignore the mail. But now that the Robinhood users’ data have been exposed, hackers might impersonate Robinhood representatives and convince users to log into their Robinhood accounts.
According to Bloomberg News, Rebecca Wright, chair of Cybersecurity Research Center, Columbia Data Science Institute, and professor of computer science, Barnard College, believes that the data breach must view this incident as a big deal.
Robinhood shares dropped 3% at 12:22 pm to $36.84, New York. The company has also said that it has managed to contain the data breach and has informed law enforcement and sought help from security company Mandiant to carry on with the investigation.
Chief Technology Officer at Mandiant, Charles Carmakal said that the firm is apprehending that the intruder might carry on with the targets and also try to extort other firms over the next several months.
The recent data breach of Robinhood is not the first time that the incident has taken place and customers have faced such hacks. In 2020, around 2000 accounts had been compromised while on a hacking spree that had siphoned off funds of customers.
However, McCreary of Fox Rothschild has also said that such breaches must not be a reason to abandon Robinhood. In the recent data breach, the attack was hinged over a phone call while communicating with a customer service representative, through whom the intruder used to gain access, reports Bloomberg News.
Since no information related to finances was divulged, it implies that customers have little legal recourse, as per Mc Creary. It is a different thing to lose a username or Social Security number that leads to fraud. As far as email addresses and names are concerned, it is difficult to prove if there is any harm. For such conditions, customers have little recourse.
Rebecca Wright has recommended that customers must take standard security measures to keep themselves protected. If people so desire, they could also apply a credit freeze to the major accounts that they hold. They might as well make use of a different email address for different purposes and select good passwords and not use them again and again.
Jake Moore associated with ESET, an internet security company says that Robinhood customers must be careful and keep a tab on their inboxes that are being carried forward. Any email that is being received by customers from Robinhood over the next month must be treated with utmost care and caution.
