Volkswagen’s leak exposes data of 800,000 EV owners

A data leak by the Volkswagen Group reportedly exposed the sensitive information for hundreds of thousands of EV owners – raising more concerns about privacy in the new world of high-tech mobility.

The details: The data leak – discovered by an anonymous whistle-blower in Europe – found that vehicle status data such as GPS coordinates and battery charge levels were exposed for 800,000 fully electric vehicle owners of Audi, VW, Seat, and Skoda EVs.    

• In 466,000 of the 800,000 cases of leaked data, the preciseness of the location data made the owner susceptible to someone being able to make a detailed profile of their daily habits. 

• The data leak originated from Cariad, a vehicle cloud platform for the VW Group, following an era by the company in the summer of 2024. 

Cariad was quickly alerted about the leak after it was reported to Chaos Computer Club (CCC), Europe’s largest hacker association, which moved swiftly to notify the appropriate parties. VW was given 30 days to rectify the problem before going public about the leak.   

Digging deeper: According to the report, the breach also made it easy for a tech-savvy person to be able to connect an owner’s vehicle to their personal credentials, using additional data available through VW Group’s online service.  

• Those impacted by the leak included German politicians, entrepreneurs, Hamburg police officers, and even suspected intelligence service employees. 

• Cariad contends that sensitive owner data like passwords and payment information was not exposed. 

Bottom line: The fact that Cariad says that more personal data was not exposed during the leak is one of the few if only bright spots about the whistleblower’s discovery. Though, the company’s words probably offer little if any comfort to many of those affected by the event. In short, the leak speaks to growing concerns about vehicle data being susceptible to more nefarious intentions and the need for automakers to put more safety measures in place to protect owners.

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