Neighbourly social network offline after claims of data breach
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Neighbourly, a social media site for New Zealand neighborhoods, shut down its site after reports of a data breach. The site's owner, Stuff Ltd, took the platform offline on Thursday 2nd of January 2025 to reduce further risk of exposure.
A team of outside security experts is now working with Neighbourly to investigate the breach. The company reported the incident to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
Exposed data includes
- Member names
- Email addresses
- Neighborhood location data
- Personal profile details
The number of affected individuals is not disclosed. The company sent alerts to all members about the breach and warns them to watch for scams and phishing attempts.
Neighbourly has not said when the site will come back online. They promised to provide details too members as the investigation progresses. For now, the site remains offline.
Update - as of 5th of January 2025, Neighbourly has been granted an injunction preventing people from accessing or using stolen data following a cyber breach. Which is a monumentally useless thing to have since those that stole the data already didn't care about court orders to begin with, and all the data brokers that will abuse the stolen data will play dumb and "find it fallen off a truck" "publicly accessible" on the internet.
