AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)05/14 Report--

Toyota Motor said recently that about 2.15 million users 'vehicle data was at risk of being leaked in Japan due to incorrect settings in the cloud environment, CCTV reported. Toyota said the leaked information may include identification numbers of vehicle equipment and vehicle locations. At the same time, however, it said that there were no reports of malicious use.

A Toyota spokesman said the error in the cloud environment was caused by human error in setting the nature of the system to "public" rather than "private" for 10 years, from November 2013 to April this year. The users involved were registered users in Japan who subscribed to Toyota T-Connect, G-Link, G-Link Lite and G-Book telematics services from January 2, 2012 to April 17, 2023, including some Lexus owners.

Toyota said: At present, the settings have been changed, the system has been repaired, and users can use the cloud service as usual without returning to the factory for maintenance. As for why this problem has not been discovered for so long, Toyota said that it is because Toyota Cloud Service lacks "active monitoring mechanism", and will introduce a system of continuous review of cloud service settings in the future, and strictly train employees in data processing specifications. In addition, Toyota will conduct an evaluation survey of Toyota Connected, the automotive data mobile phone company responsible for operating Toyota Cloud Platform. It is understood that Toyota's cloud platform mainly provides convenient services for car owners, including reminding car owners of car maintenance information, calling for help, sending positioning after vehicle theft, connecting streaming media entertainment and other functions.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time Toyota has been exposed to user vehicle data leaks. In October last year, Toyota Motor said it had found more than 290,000 customer information suspected to have been leaked in the T-Connect service, including customer email addresses and customer numbers, affecting individual users who had registered with the service website using email addresses since July 2017. The reason for the information leak is that from December 2017 to September 15 this year, the contractor who developed the T-Connect website accidentally uploaded some source code with public configuration.

Frequent user information data has been leaked, which also makes many users put a big question mark on Toyota's information security. And these days, toyota is bad news after bad news. On April 28, Daihatsu Motor, a subsidiary of Toyota, apologized for improper modifications to the front door lining of four of its models in side crash tests, violating test procedures and methods stipulated by regulations and suspected fraud. Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda also apologized for the incident, saying Daihatsu's misconduct involved safety issues, which are the most important aspects of vehicles. This is a betrayal of customer trust and absolutely unacceptable behavior. The process of understanding the situation will begin with detailed investigations and comprehensive fact-gathering, to determine the true causes and to try to prevent recurrence. At the same time, he also said that he would do his best to regain the trust of customers as soon as possible.

On one side is negative news, on the other side is Toyota's net profit decline. On May 10, Toyota released its performance report from April 2022 to March 2023. Toyota's fiscal year 2023 revenue was 37.15 trillion yen, up 18.4 percent year-on-year, according to the report. Net profit was 2.45 trillion yen, down 14 percent from a year earlier. As for the decline in net profit, officials said it was mainly due to factors such as rising raw material prices, car operating profit and net profit fell.

At present, Toyota faces not only a decline in net profit, Toyota's sales in China this year are not ideal, relevant data show: Toyota's domestic sales in March was 136,400 vehicles, down 18.5% year-on-year. From January to March, Toyota sold 379,800 vehicles in China, down 14.57% year-on-year. For Toyota's poor sales in China, some insiders pointed out that with the rapid development of new energy vehicles in China, Toyota's transformation speed in the development field of new energy vehicles is very slow, which is the main reason for the decline in sales in China. In addition, the rise of new domestic forces and Tesla's earlier big price reduction strategy have, to a certain extent, squeezed Toyota's sales in China.

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