Hacked? boAT gets a ‘reality check’ with cyberattack affecting over 75 lakh users after ‘Better than Apple’ ad

Homegrown accessories brand boAT recently made headlines after it published an ad claiming that Indian buyers should “think better” and buy boAT gadgets instead of Apple products. The ad which mentioned: “Don’t be a Fanboy (referring to Apple), be a boAThead.” quickly went viral on social media and divided netizens. But it appears the social media hype is short-lived.

boAT data leak: Customer's mobile numbers, home addresses revealed

boAT, India’s leading wearable company as per IDC, reported suffered a massive cyberattack which the company did not disclose and boAT is yet to acknowledge the breach. As per a report by Forbes, the personal data of over 75 lakh customers of boAT products were compromised and the dataset is available on the dark web. The personal data that has been leaked include names, mobile numbers, email IDs, home addresses and IDs of boAT users. A hacker named ShopifyGUY came forward and claimed to access the leaked data of boAT customers on April 5. A total of 7.55 lakh user data entries were revealed.

After the media reported the data breach, several individual cybersecurity enthusiasts tried to gain access to confirm the authenticity of the leaked data. There’s no official confirmation as to how the data breach took place. It is still unclear as to whether there was a breach in privacy on boAT’s side or did fake boAT ads on social media run by scammers compromised the data of customers.

boAT device users should be careful

The company, founded in 2016 by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta, is the number one wearables brand in India with a 19% market share. It has over 26% market share in the TWS earbuds segment. As far as boAT users are concerned, they must take extra caution while attending calls from unknown numbers, especially WhatsApp video/audio calls from strangers.

With the kind of personal data that has been leaked, scammers can create phishing attempts by fooling customers into believing that their recent boAT purchase will make them eligible for better deals, cashback, etc.