Millions of Cash App users affected by former employee's data breach

Mobile Payment App Affected

Over 8 million users of the mobile payment app Cash App could be affected by a data breach after a former staff of the Company downloaded reports containing the personal information of U.S. users. Whereas account user names and passwords were not affected, the mobile payments app is now notifying customers of the breach. Disclosed it in an April 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Financial Company Headed

Cash App is owned by Block, formerly known as Square, a financial payments company headed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Block said in the filing that it recently determined that a former employee downloaded specific reports belonging to Cash App. That information included users' full names and brokerage account numbers, a unique identifier for a person's stock activity on Cash App Investing.

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Potentially Affected

For some customers, the compromised data also included brokerage portfolio value, brokerage portfolio holdings, and stock trading activity for one trading day, according to Block. The filing says the only potentially affected users include those in the U.S. who use Cash App Investing, around 8.2 million users.

Information Protection

Block said it is contacting all current and former customers of the feature to provide them with information about this incident and share resources to answer their questions. The Company takes the security of data belonging to its customers very seriously and reviews and strengthens administrative and technical safeguards to protect its customers' data.

Preliminary Assessment

This data by itself is invaluable. Darrah said it has to be paired with other stuff. Bad guys can then be more efficient in their illegal shenanigans, meaning breaking into an account and taking things out of a performance. Although the Company has not completed its investigation of the incident, based on its preliminary assessment and the information currently known, the Company does not now believe the incident will impact its business or financial results, the filing said.