Discovery Insure scammed into exposing customer data
Learn More
Discovery Insure, a subsidiary of the financial services Discovery South Africa, has experienced a data breach that compromised the personal information of some of its clients.
Per the explanation provided by Discovery Insure, an scammer has used information obtained from historical third-party data breaches to call Discovery Insure's call center and request policy schedules. The scammer successfully passed Discovery Insure’s identification and verification screening.
Discovery claims that its systems were not compromised and that the breach was due to the scammer using pre-existing data from breaches at credit bureaus (2020), messaging platforms (2024), and other data scraping techniques.
Exposed data inlcudes:
- Names and surnames
- Cellphone numbers
- Email addresses
- Residential addresses
- ID numbers
- Details of insured items
No details are disclosed about the number of affected individuals.
The breach is claimed to affect fewer than 20 clients, and was publicly revealed by Magda Wierzycka, the CEO of one of the customer companies that were impacted by the breach. She expressed her outrage on Twitter and announced her decision to cancel all her company’s policies with Discovery.
Affected clients received individual notifications on May 17 and June 5, offering support including personal security consultations and physical premises security assessments.
