Millions affected by Robinhood data breach

By Ahmad Alsayouf, Staff Reporter, The Pawprint

On November 3, popular U.S. trading app Robinhood was hit with a data breach which exposed about seven million people’s personal information such as their names and email addresses. Roughly, five million people’s email addresses were accessed and another two million people’s names were revealed. A small group of about 300 people had additional information being revealed, such as dates of birth and zip codes. The company stated that the data breach has only affected a “limited amount of personal information for a portion of our customers”. It is believed that financial information and people’s social security numbers were not revealed to the public after the breach.

Robinhood is a U.S-only app which is suitable for users over the age of 18. They need to provide their address and a valid social security number. The platform, which lets regular individuals interested in investing to trade low-volume shares, surged in popularity earlier this year.