Online printing site Doxzoo exposed thousands of customer files

Doxzoo proudly says on its website that your “documents are in safe hands.” But for some time, that wasn’t true.

The U.K. printing company left its customer files on a cloud storage bucket, hosted on Amazon Web Services, without a password. Anyone who knew the easy-to-guess bucket name could access the massive trove of customer files. By the time that the company secured the bucket, it contained more than 250,000 customer-uploaded files.

When reached by email, Paul Bennett, one of the company’s directors, confirmed the exposure.

“The data we store [with Amazon] is solely the files we use for printing their documents and we have a clear privacy policy on our website to cover how this data is held,” said Bennett.

“We frequently review processes and technical architectures to ensure we adhere to current best practices. We are committed to providing the best possible service to our customers and take the security of their personal data very seriously,” he added. “We have already sought guidance from the ICO on our data security and the precautions we take.”

But a spokesperson for the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it has not received a notification of a security lapse from Doxzoo.

“People have the right to expect that organization’s will handle their personal information securely and responsibly,” the ICO spokesperson said. “Where that doesn’t happen, people can come to the ICO and we will look into the details. When a data incident occurs, we would expect an organization to consider whether it is appropriate to contact the people affected, and to consider whether there are steps that can be taken to protect them from any potential adverse effects.”

Companies that fall foul of European data protection rules can be fined up to 4% of their annual turnover.

At the time of writing, Doxzoo has made no mention on either its blog or its social platforms about the security lapse.

Doxzoo finds itself in similar company to Rallyhood, a Sprint contractor, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, FormGet, Mixcloud, and Samsung, all of which have in the past year left sensitive data online by mistake.

How much should a startup spend on security?

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5G devices were less than 1% of US smartphone purchases in 2019

No surprise, really, that 5G smartphone sales are on the way up. Frankly, there’s really no other way to go, according to the latest numbers from NPD’s Mobile Phone Tracking. The firm noted that 5G handsets accounted for less than 1% of total sales in the U.S.

The hurdles are also what you’d expect: namely, pricing and the lack of 5G availability. There’s also the fact that for much of 2019, there simply weren’t that many phones to purchase. When the devices did start arriving from companies like LG, Samsung and OnePlus, the numbers started trending upward, with an increase of roughly 9x from the first to the second half of the year.

Awareness, too, increased notably. Some nine in 10 surveyed consumers in the U.S. had some familiarity with 5G in the second half of the year, up from 73% in the first half. Meanwhile, 65% expressed “interest” in purchasing the tech. How that translates to actual sales, however, is another question entirely.

That should improve as the price of manufacturing these devices comes down, thanks to lower-cost components from companies like Qualcomm. And in markets like the U.S., 5G coverage will be greatly expanded by year’s end, making it a much more appealing purchase. And, of course, never underestimate the impact of Apple’s first 5G iPhone.

Smartphone manufacturers have very much been banking on the increased interest in 5G to help correct the larger trend of flagging sales.

Of course, it remains to be seen how COVID-19 will impact sales. It seems safe to assume that, like every aspect of our lives, there will be a notable impact on the number of people buying expensive smartphones. Certainly things like smartphone purchases tend to lessen in importance in the face of something like a global pandemic.

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Alipay owner Ant Financial takes minority stake in Klarna

Some big moves in the payments platform space: Ant Financial Group, the owner of China’s Alipay payment platform has announced it’s taking a minority stake in Swedish payments platform Klarna — which has a strong European presence and a flagship product that lets shoppers buy now and pay later in interest-free instalments (typically 14 or 30 days after the purchase).

The pair have not disclosed terms of the deal but Reuters reported the stake amounts to less than 1% and was made up of existing and new shares. It also cites its source telling it the stake was done at a “slight uptick” to Klarna’s $460 million funding round last August — which valued the company at $5.5BN.

A spokeswomen for Klarna told us it’s not disclosing the value of the investment but she confirmed Reuters reporting, saying the stake is less than 1%.

Ant Financial is part of Chinese ecommerce and retail services multinational giant, Alibaba Group, which took a 33% stake in the fintech affiliate back in 2018 that gave it direct ownership of its suite of products and services — including an investment fund, micro-loans, insurance services, a digital bank and the Alipay mobile payments platform. 

Prior to today’s news, Klarna and Alipay had already been collaborating via Alibaba’s global ecommerce marketplace, AliExpress — which offers Klarna’s ‘Pay later’ option in multiple markets.

Now the pair touted their deepening partnership as set to bring more “innovative and convenient” financial services to consumers worldwide.

They are also clearly hoping to further grease the wheels of East to West ecommerce by expanding opportunities for China’s growing middle class to tap into Klarna’s network of European and global merchants via their preferred online payment method.

Commenting in a statement, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiątkowski said: “For too long consumers have had to endure non-intuitive, boring and overly complex services when shopping both online and offline. At the heart of this cooperation between Klarna and Alipay is a shared ambition of innovating truly superior shopping experiences and creating destinations of inspiration for consumers across the world.”

“Alipay, and the wider Alibaba Group, have truly set the global pace on retail innovation and the app economy. We are delighted in this confidence shown in Klarna in defining the future of payments and shopping and are very much looking forward to working together further in the future,” he added.

Klarna said its technology is being used by more than 200,000 retailers and e-commerce platforms globally at this point, including AliExpress, H&M, ASOS, Expedia Group, IKEA, Farfetch, Adidas, Spotify, Samsung and Nike.

Last year it said it added over 75,000 new merchants — describing itself as a “strategic growth partner” for these retailers and claiming it’s driving “millions of referrals and traffic each month” from owned channels to partner merchants from consumers who it says are actively seeking where they can shop with Klarna. (It claims a base of 85 million shoppers.)

Ant Financial, meanwhile, has been working on expanding Alipay’s global footprint by cutting local deals in markets outside China where it cannot build up its transaction volume organically. Notably, back in 2015, it  took a stake in India’s One97 — which operates a major local mobile payment platform, Paytm.

TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden contributed to this report

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