Unacademy is looking into the matter
Bengaluru-based ed-tech firm Unacademy, that was hacked as reported by cybersecurity firm Cyble, on Thursday said the all the sensitive data of its users is safe and it is addressing the security issue. According to Cyble researchers, nearly 22 million Unacademy user accounts were affected and the data was dumped and sold on Dark Web. Unacademy said that they have been closely monitoring the situation.
'We would like to assure our users that no sensitive information such as financial data or location has been breached," said Hemesh Singh, Co-Founder and CTO, Unacademy. "Data security and privacy protection of our users is of utmost importance to us and we are doing everything possible, to ensure no personal information is compromised," he added in a statement.
Social media giant Facebook in February this year joined General Atlantic, Sequoia India and others for a fresh $110 million round of funding into Unacademy. According to Singh, as per their internal investigations, "email data of around 11 million users has been compromised as against 22 million stated in reports".
"This is on account of only around 11 million email data of users available on the Unacademy platform. We are doing a complete background check and will be addressing any potential security loophole to further bolster our efforts of ensuring a far more robust security mechanism," said Singh.
The company said it is in communication with users to keep them updated on the progress. Unacademy was started in 2015 as a platform for educators and learners with educators creating educational videos and offering Live interactive classes with access to more than 30 exam categories for the learners.
It now has more than 1 million videos on its platform. Currently, the platform has over 10,000 educators who have created educational videos on Unacademy. In 2019, Unacademy launched its subscription for various examinations which gives access to the learners throughout the country to top educators and structured learning.
Within a span of one year, Unacademy has more than 90,000 active subscribers with 70 per cent of its subscribers coming from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. More than 700 educators take classes on Unacademy every day, according to the company.
