Around 10,000 customers of Aegon Life Insurance, a joint venture between the Netherlands-based Aegon and India's Times Group, fall prey to a data leak which was caused through website's support channels, which clients used to communicate with the insurer regarding their grievances.
Reportedly, the data compromised included all the details ranging from the very basic demographic ones like name, gender, age to more specific ones such as health policy problems and annual income. It occurred due to a security vulnerability in the company's website.
Renie Ravin, Indian web developer and co-founder of the independent blogging platform, 'IndiBlogger', discovered the vulnerability which led to the data leak and reported it to the company in July 2019.
However, there is no evidence of the exposed data being illegally accessed or misused.
Referencing from the statements given by the company, "Aegon Life Insurance, India announces that a vulnerability on their website exposed information of some Indian customers who had used web forms to get in touch with Aegon Life."
"Aegon Life immediately fixed the vulnerability and have since informed all customers of this exposure. Aegon Life estimates that up to 10,000 customers were possibly affected."
"We will initiate an outreach program in the coming days to offer guidance to affected customers and to let them know what information was exposed. At Aegon Life, data security and customer privacy are of utmost importance and we will continue to be transparent with customers as we investigate further," the company added.
