SWVL, the Egyptian ride-hailing service that has operations in Kenya has today announced a security breach that has affected its users.
“Continuing our trend of being open and honest with our customers, we wish to inform you that our team recently identified a security breach that involved unauthorized access to our systems,” they said in the notice.
SWVL says they noticed a breach on the evening of 3rd July 2020. They are still investigating the matter but they say that the data that was compromised is restricted to names, email addresses and phone numbers. They claim that passwords and credit card information were not affected or exposed.
SWVL says they took a number of steps when they became aware of the breach. They regenerated all of their access keys to their systems and infrastructure, they signed out of all customers from their accounts, reviewed all-access privileges, reviewed all firewall and access controls and strengthened their systems.
They also say that the vulnerabilities have been addressed and are working to make sure that this does not happen again. SWVL says they have employed a team of ‘leading cybersecurity experts’ to help them resolve the breach.
The company has urged its customers to take the following steps to safeguard their accounts. SWVL users are urged to update their passwords where one should use a mix of characters and not use passwords used on other sites. They have also said that they will never email, call or text you for any personal details and if you get them, report them via the SWVL app or email them at [email protected] and to avoid clicking suspicious links.
