Maeve Lewis, the CEO of One in Four, an organisation that supports abuse survivors, is advising their clients to be cautious of any “dodgy” emails or texts they receive following the hacking of the company that stores their data.
The company, Evide, which is based in Derry and manages data for around 140 charities and non-profit organisations in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK, was targeted by cyber criminals last month, at which time they contacted the PSNI and engaged cybersecurity specialists to help contain the issue and support recovery efforts.
Ms Lewis told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that One in Four had been in contact with Evide to ask them to take a legal injunction to stop the sharing of the sensitive information. She pointed out that One in Four had not been directly targeted, so they could not initiate legal proceedings.
It was her understanding that One in Four’s clients’ personal data had been accessed. “We were told by the cybersecurity experts that the data is very valuable because it can be sold to people who then go on to try and commit fraud by, for example, getting bank account details or other personal data."
Ms Lewis added that documents that were attached to the data had not been accessed. One in Four believed the data of about 1,000 clients had been hacked, in the past week they had contacted 500 clients and were continuing to get in touch with people.
Unusual emails or texts
“But if they've not heard from us, they can access support and information on our website at www.oneinfour.ie. We would also just urge people to be careful of any unusual email or text messages that come through".
The data which was stolen included personal information such as short records of people's engagement with One in Four’s services. “So we really don't know what the situation is with that data. We do know that any attachments, any letters and any reports, for example, to child protection services, they have not been accessed."
Ms Lewis said that the people they had contacted had been “remarkably generous”, while, obviously, some people had been quite distressed “because we are dealing with some very vulnerable people".
“Sadly, in this day and age, people are accustomed to being contacted by dodgy calls, dodgy emails. So people are generally aware of what they should do if they get an email from an unusual source. People have been very generous to us, but we are continuing to offer support. And if anybody out there is concerned this morning, we urge them to look at our website and then find the details of how to contact us”.
Ms Lewis went on to say that One in Four had been told that the most valuable information was personal data, which criminals then try to sell on to people who want to try and defraud people by contacting them via email or text message trying to get bank details. Sadly, people being targeted for financial information happened all the time, she said.
