Chinese Tesla staff had access to the private data of over a hundred thousand of the carmaker’s employees, a whistleblower has warned regulators.
Lukasz Krupski, a former employee, said information about current and former Tesla staff, including passport numbers, medical details and salaries, were available to staff worldwide on internal systems.
He has written to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s privacy watchdog, warning that personnel in China or Russia could access the data, creating a “significant security risk”. Tesla is believed to have restricted access since.
“It could be very useful for Russian or Chinese intelligence,” Mr Krupski told The Telegraph. “Individuals in these countries who have power, they have their own agendas which [do] not necessarily align with the Western world.”
Mr Krupski said the employee data was available to everyone in the company without restrictions, including details about thousands of staff in the UK. The data included personal details of Elon Musk, Tesla’s billionaire chief executive.
Tesla employed more than 127,000 people last year but the database reportedly includes a large number of former employees, including thousands of files showing reasons why they had left the company.
The Telegraph could not confirm claims that employees in China had access to employee data, which it is alleged was available through project tracking software called Jira.
Tesla tightened security around the system earlier this year,...
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