Millions of people who use smartphone software to avoid police speed traps may have fallen into a trap set by hackers instead.
Trapster, a GPS-based app that lets iPhone, Android and BlackBerry owners report and view police speed traps on a map, alerted users this week that their passwords may have been stolen in a massive security breach.
“If you’ve registered your account with Trapster, then it’s best to assume that your e-mail address and password were included among the compromised data,” Trapster said.
The company noted, however, that only a portion of Trapster users were affected, but it declined to say how many. Trapster has about 10 million users total, but only those who opt to report speed traps must sign up for a Trapster account with an e-mail address and password.
If all Trapster users were compromised, the security breach would be significantly larger than the security leak at the Gawker blog network. In December, hackers stole the e-mail addresses and passwords of all 400,000 users who registered for an account on Gawker.com or one of its blogs, such as Gizmodo, Jezebel and Lifehacker.
Trapster officials advised its app users to change their passwords immediately on Trapster.com. If they used the same password for other services such as e-mail, those passwords should be changed, too.
Trapster said it has rewritten software code to prevent future break-ins.