Data breach cases seems to be having a field day in recent weeks. After Amazon got into docks on data breach front, it is now Quora’s turn to face the blushes. The popular knowledge sharing platform, which resolves people’s query through Q&A format, has said that data of nearly 100 million users may have been compromised after a “malicious third party” was able to gain unauthorized access to one of its system.
Quora said the data that may have been affected include name, email address and encrypted password. The company also said that the data imported from the linked networks when authorized by the users may also have been affected. However, the company has categorically stated that the question & answer that are unanimously written on its platform have not been affected by the hacking incident.
In a separate article published on its help center, Quora said that “it is confident that no partner’s financial information has been compromised.” However, it did admit that some access token related to Stripe – the payment service used by the firm – may have been affected. Nonetheless, Quora expressed confidence that all the financial information of its partners are pretty much safe.
Quora said that it is notifying all those users whose data have been compromised. It has also started logging off all the affected users from the platform to prevent further damage.
With Quora becoming the latest high profile victim in series of data breach attack, the question over the security consumer’s data will only assume more importance. However, the data security issue is such a tricky issue that even big tech giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon are unable to offer a convincing answer with regards to data security.
Their unconvincing answers may pave way for a more open debate in future as to what actually needs to be done to protect the invaluable and sensitive data of internet users.