Robinhood’s recent hack exposes customers’ full name, email address and more

Robinhood reported that its customers' accounts were breached by hackers on November 3, 2021, and it happened because their customer service staff was tricked into letting intruders in. The hackers breached Robinhood’s security and made away with 5 million customers' emails, addresses, and the full names of 2 million customers; with a smaller subset of customers — 310.

If you have an account with Robinhood, this may be the time to change your passwords. Robinhood shared the news on its blog that the hackers sought an extortion payment after the intrusion, but the company did not disclose if a ransom was paid. The company has informed law enforcement and they also called in cybersecurity company Mandiant Inc. MNDT to help investigate.

“Following a diligent review, putting the entire Robinhood community on notice of this incident now is the right thing to do,” Robinhood Chief Security Officer Caleb Sima said in the post.

Robinhood said it will contact the affected customers directly as soon as possible. This embattled company is in another hot water for the security breach. A while ago, Robinhood was fined and asked to pay $70 million for outages and misleading customers, the largest-ever FINRA penalty.

•            FINRA said it fined Robinhood $57 million and ordered the stock trading app to pay nearly  $13 million in restitution to thousands of clients.

•            "Robinhood has invested heavily in improving platform stability, enhancing our educational resources, and building out our customer support and legal and compliance teams," Robinhood said in response to the fine.