REGIONAL job portal JobStreet.com is the first company to reach out to its users, saying it is one of the organisations affected by what is believed to be the largest data breach in the country.

In the company’s email to its users, chief executive Suresh Thiru says JobStreet.com’s own investigations have confirmed that some personal information to accounts created before July 2012 had been exposed, reports The Star Online.

JobStreet.com advised its users to be vigilant when approached for sensitive information, especially if requested over the phone or by email.

“When you trust us with your personal information, you naturally expect the information to be safeguarded, and our team is continuously enhancing our security measures for all user information stored with JobStreet.com,” Suresh said in his email.

“This includes the password reset exercise in January 2017. Since passwords have been reset, your JobStreet.com account is secure.”

The breach, revealed by Lowyat.net said that the data leaked from JobStreet.com contained 17 million rows of user information, which includes names, login IDs, passwords, emails, nationalities, addresses and phone numbers between the year 2012 and 2013.

Yesterday, Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak said the probe into the leak was nearing completion.

Besides JobStreet.com, the data breach also affected telcos and associations whereby the users’ names, MyKard numbers, phone numbers and house addresses were leaked.

The report claimed that the personal data of millions of Malaysians, as well as more than 50 million records of customer data from various telcos, were up for sale online.

The article was removed under MCMC instructions soon after it was published that day. The regulator later explained in a statement that the order to take down the report was a “preventive measure”.

Lowyat.net then restored the original article on October 20 with MCMC’s approval minus the leaked data. – November 2, 2017.