Safaricom Kenya sued for alleged breach in private consumer data
Kenyan telecommunications operator, Safaricom, is facing just over a $1 trillion lawsuit for allegedly violating the data privacy of 11.5 million consumers.
According to The Standard, a case filed at the High Court details how one of the company’s subscribers, Benedict Kabugi, accused Safaricom of breaching private data. This comes after Kabugi was approached by a person who was in possession of all 11.5 million consumers data.
The data breached contained specific details — full names, mobile phone numbers, gender, age, identity numbers, passport numbers, as well as the total amounts gambled — of consumers who used Safaricom cellphone numbers to gamble on a number of betting platforms in Kenya.
Kabugi wants Safaricom to compensate each of the affected 11.5 consumers. He adds that ‘the charging of two [Safaricom] employees was confirmation that Safaricom data was accessed, messed and interfered with’.
Telecompaper reports this as ‘the first time a lawsuit of this magnitude has been levelled against a mobile service provider in Kenya’.