WeTransfer sent files to wrong recipients

WeTransfer had a data breach on 16 and 17 June, the company reports in an e-mail to victims that Tweakers has seen. In the data leak, messages about files sent to customers were also sent to the wrong recipients.

It is not yet known how many users have fallen victim to the data breach and how many people have wrongly received files. WeTransfer does report that the files were opened, but only by the right people. Affected users have received a warning from the company.

“We are very much looking for the cause of the problem, but can’t say much about it yet,” said the company in the e-mail. WeTransfer further says that users who did not receive a message were not victims. The affected urls are blocked as a precaution, so that the files cannot be downloaded by the wrong people. The company also recommends that you watch out for suspicious e-mails. Some Plus users are logged out of their account.

WeTransfer

WeTransfer is a Dutch company for the sharing of large files, which was founded in 2009. Last year, the company reported more than 40 million active users. More than a billion files are also shared every month. WeTransfer also has integrations with Chrome, Slack and Sketch. Since last year there is also a mobile app with which it is possible to send large files.

In April of this year, however, the company faced competition from its own soil: KPN is testing its own variant of the service. Secure File Transfer allows users to send large files free of charge, but with encryption. The files are provided with end-to-end encryption based on AES-gcm and are encrypted with sha-256. It is also possible to protect downloads with a password. KPN’s service is still a beta version and not designed for large-scale use, according to the provider.