Kenya’s biggest telco Safaricom has been sued for an alleged privacy breach that saw personal data of more than 11.5 million Kenyans exposed.
According to The Standard Digital, the telco has been slapped with a whopping Kshs 115 trillion lawsuit in a case filed at the High Court last week Friday by one Benedict Kabugi.
Apparently, millions of Safaricom subscribers have had their sports betting history and biodata exposed, including names, phone numbers, ID numbers, gender, age, passport numbers and even details about the make and type of devices they used to place their bets.
“The data, which the petitioner herein viewed personally, was specific to gamblers who had used their Safaricom mobile numbers to gamble on various betting platforms registered in Kenya,” says Kabugi, the man behind this historic lawsuit.
The lawsuit comes at a time when data protection laws in Kenya need to be taken more seriously than ever, especially now that the government is going digital with its services.
Safaricom has yet to respond to these allegations.