ViewFines Data Breach

What happened

In May 2018, the South African website for viewing traffic fines online known as ViewFines suffered a data breach. Over 934k records containing 778k unique email addresses were exposed and included names, phone numbers, government issued IDs and passwords stored in plain text.

Exposed data

Recommended actions

• Change your ViewFines password immediately, and update it anywhere you reused the same password.
• Enable two-factor authentication on the affected account and on your critical services (email, banking).
• Watch for targeted phishing emails referencing ViewFines — attackers weaponise breach data quickly.
• Stay alert for smishing (SMS phishing) and SIM-swap attempts using your phone number.
• Exposed identity data raises identity-theft risk — consider credit monitoring or a credit freeze.