What Happened
In April 2021, ClearVoice Surveys, a market research company, experienced a data breach when a publicly accessible database backup from August-September 2015 was discovered and redistributed on hacking forums. An unauthorized individual notified the company on April 17, 2021, that they had accessed the backup file stored in the company’s cloud service provider, which had been inadvertently left unsecured due to human error. The breach exposed approximately 17.56 million records containing sensitive personal information including names, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, dates of birth, gender, and plaintext passwords from survey participants. ClearVoice Surveys immediately secured the backup file within an hour of notification and confirmed the breach’s authenticity. The company subsequently forced password resets for all affected users and implemented additional security measures to prevent future incidents.
