Andy Rubin apologizes for Essential’s ‘humiliating’ customer data leak

After requiring customers who ordered the Essential phone to provide their driver’s license information over email to verify their shipping address, CEO Andy Rubin today apologized for the incident in a blog post, calling it “humiliating” and that he is “personally responsible for this error.”

The Android creator starts the apology note with a boo hoo about how “thousands of micro-decisions” (including one to ask for driver’s licenses over email, evidently) must be made daily. He then confirmed that approximately 70 customers were affected by the sloppy confirmation process, and that Essential will offer one year of LifeLock protection to impacted patrons to prevent potential identify theft. The team has also disabled the “misconfigured” account to prevent people from accidentally sharing their personal information with other Essential customers, and Rubin promises to invest in infrastructure and customer care.

Rubin did not provide additional information on how it will fix its shipment confirmation requirements, though suffice to say, you should think twice before sharing personal information over plain email.