Digital Ocean says it exposed customer data after it left an internal document online

Web hosting provider Digital Ocean is currently in the process of notifying some customers about a security lapse that exposed some of their account details.

According to an email the company is currently sending out, the security leak occurred due to an internal Digital Ocean document that was mistakenly left accessible online.

Digital Ocean says the document contained several types of user account details.

This included personally identifiable information such as customer email addresses and their respective Digital Ocean usernames, but also account technical details such as the number of droplets (servers) owned by the customer, the user’s bandwidth usage, support or sales communications notes, and the amount of money the customer paid during calendar year 2018.

Digital Ocean said that the internal document was accessed at least 15 times while it was left available online.

The web hosting provider said it did not see any unauthorized access to impacted customers’ servers as a result of this incident.

Digital Ocean said the file contained details for less than 1% of the company’s total customer base.

“Our community is built on trust, so we are taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the company wrote customers.

“We will be educating our employees on protecting customer data, establishing new procedures to alert us of potential exposures in a more timely manner, and making configuration changes to prevent future data exposure.”

A copy of the email Digital Ocean has been sending customers today is available below.