Essential’s apology: free phones, LifeLock support to those whose information was compromised
Yesterday, it came to light that a phishing attack was hitting Essential customers. Someone seemingly hacked into the company’s email server and sent emails to customers requesting a photo ID to verify their orders.
That alone is scary, but even scarier is that those who did respond exposed their info to others in that email group as the email platform’s response system hadn’t been properly configured.
Andy Rubin suggests only 70 customers’ info was compromised in an official apology today. It was there he also revealed that the company would offer 2 years of LifeLock support to protect them from identity theft, as well as continued customer care to ensure all their worries and needs are taken care of.
What he didn’t reveal in that blog post, however, was that those customers would also be getting their phones for free. He mentioned as much on Twitter, noting that he felt the mention of freebies didn’t feel right for that particular post.
We’re not going to sit here and pretend Essential is completely absolved, especially when the head of the company is one of the smartphone and tech’s most brilliant and veteran minds. But all they can do moving forward is commit to improving security, help protect the customers who were compromised, and offer a token of appreciation for the potential headaches that all of this may have caused.