A South African IT company has left thousands of recorded phone calls exposed online, accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The recordings include deeply personal conversations covering medical consultations, financial discussions, and other sensitive matters that callers almost certainly believed were private.
The exposure was reported by GroundUp, which found that the data was not hidden behind any meaningful security barrier. Ordinary people, calling what they thought were secure lines, had their voices and their most private concerns broadcast to the open internet without their knowledge.
South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act exists precisely to prevent this kind of breach, placing legal obligations on companies to safeguard the personal data they collect. Whether the company involved faces any consequences under that law remains a question worth watching.
For everyday South Africans, this is a sharp reminder that the words "your call may be recorded for quality and training purposes" carry a risk most people never consider. Who is storing that recording, where it is being kept, and how well it is protected are questions that rarely get asked until something goes wrong.
Originally published by AllAfrica · info@groundup.org.za (GroundUp).