Latest news with #personal information


TechCrunch
11-07-2025
- TechCrunch
AI chatbot's simple ‘123456' password risked exposing personal data of millions of McDonald's job applicants
In Brief Security researchers found that they could access the personal information of 64 million people who had applied for a job at McDonald's, in large part by logging into the company's AI job hiring chatbot with the username and password '123456.' Ian Carroll and Sam Curry wrote in a blog post that 'during a cursory security review of a few hours,' they found the password issue and another simple security vulnerability in an internal API, which allowed access to job applicants' past conversations with the chatbot, called McHire, supplied to McDonald's by The personal data seen by the researchers included applicants' names, email addresses, home addresses, and phone numbers. wrote in a blog post that it resolved the issues 'within a few hours' after the researchers' report, and that 'at no point was candidate information leaked online or made publicly available.' The researchers' findings were first reported by Wired.


CNA
11-07-2025
- Business
- CNA
China denies asking firms to collect data illegally after new EU probe
BEIJING: Beijing on Friday (Jul 11) denied asking firms to "illegally" collect and store users' personal information, after an Irish regulator helping the European Union regulate data privacy began investigating Chinese social media giant TikTok. "The Chinese government attaches great importance to and protects data privacy and security in accordance with the law," foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said. Beijing "has never and will never require companies or individuals to illegally collect or store data", Mao said. "We hope that the European side will respect the market economy and fair competition, and provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from all countries," she told a regular news conference. The social media giant has been in the crosshairs of Western governments for years over fears that personal data could be used by China for espionage or propaganda purposes. However, TikTok has insisted that it has never received any requests from Chinese authorities for European users' data. TikTok was fined €530 million (US$620 million) in May by the Data Protection Commission over sending personal data to China, although the Chinese social media giant had insisted this data was only accessed remotely.