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Internet provider questioned about data leak

An accidental data leak at Internet provider, Sunrise, allowed access to clients' details. sunrise.ch

The government's data protection ombudsman, Odilo Guntern, has asked the second-largest Internet provider, Sunrise, to explain how the e-mail addresses and passwords of all its clients became accessible to the public.

Guntern also wants Sunrise to outline what measures it plans to take to prevent such a leak happening again.

However, the data protection ombudsman said he did not plan to open an inquiry into a possible breach of data protection laws.

Sunrise was alerted about the leak on Tuesday by the weekly newspaper “Weltwoche”. In its latest edition, the paper revealed that the addresses and passwords of the company’s 300,000 clients had been publicly available from July 2 to August 1.

The telecommunications company admitted on Wednesday that data had been accessed from 700 accounts. A spokesman said the accounts had been made accessible by accident after the hardware was updated and extended.

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