If you find parking spots with this popular app, your data may have been stolen
Charlotte drivers who find parking spaces with the popular ParkMobile app might have had some of their data breached, the company warned this week.
About 21 million accounts nationwide, including users in Charlotte, may have been breached, according to a notification that ParkMobile sent to the city of Charlotte after the Observer contacted the Charlotte Department of Transportation for details about the breach.
“No parking transaction data or credit card information was compromised,” according to the ParkMobile reply to the city. “Only basic account information was accessed,” including license plate numbers, email addresses, phone numbers and vehicle nicknames.
“In a small percentage of cases, mailing addresses were also affected,” according to ParkMobile.
The company doesn’t collect Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and birth dates.
The breach affected users who signed up for the app before March 17, ParkMobile officials said.
The company posted a similar message on its website.
ParkMobile also allows drivers to make cashless payments for parking with their smartphones. The app is free to download, but there users pay a service charge for each parking session.
Signs for the app are posted all across Charlotte, as well as Atlanta, Washington and other cities.
Charlotte began using the ParkMobile service in 2012, the Observer previously reported.
Company officials said their investigation showed that encrypted passwords were accessed, “but not the encryption keys needed to read them.”
Users can choose to change their passwords in the settings section of the app or the online ParkMobileSettings page, officials said.
ParkMobile first alerted users to the breach on March 26, when, in a statement, the company said it “recently became aware of a cybersecurity incident linked to a vulnerability in a third-party software that we use.
“In response, we immediately launched an investigation with the assistance of a leading cybersecurity firm to address the incident. Out of an abundance of caution, we have also notified the appropriate law enforcement authorities.”
Officials said they’d taken “additional precautionary steps” at the time, including “eliminating the third-party vulnerability, maintaining our security and continuing to monitor our systems.”
This story was originally published April 14, 2021 at 2:30 PM with the headline "If you find parking spots with this popular app, your data may have been stolen."