TaskRabbit is now back online following a self-imposed outage that began earlier this week as it investigated a cyberattack on its systems.
The company is advising anyone with a TaskRabbit account to change their password as a precaution. It also told Digital Trends its security team will be performing an automatic password reset within the next day.
TaskRabbit, which matches freelance labor with nearby folks who need to get stuff done, took down its website and app on Monday after learning of the hack. Both went back online at 4.30 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
In a message posted on its website, TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot said the San Francisco-based company was still investigating the incident, but confirmed that “an unauthorized user gained access to our systems.”
She said that as a result, “certain personally identifiable information may have been compromised.”
Besides the password reset, the CEO also advised TaskRabbit users to monitor their accounts for any suspicious activity, adding that anyone who uses their TaskRabbit password on other websites and apps should change them, too.
Brown-Philpot said her company is “working to implement additional measures to enhance the security of our systems.” These include:
- Examining ways to make its login processes more secure
- Evaluating its data retention practices to reduce the amount of data it holds on Taskers and Clients, where appropriate
- Enhancing overall network cyber-threat-detection technology
The CEO added that an outside forensics team is continuing to investigate precisely what kind of personal information may have been compromised, and promised to notify every affected individual once the information becomes available. The service, which operates across 40 U.S. cities, as well as London in the U.K., is believed to have more than a million users.
The company promised to keep the TaskRabbit community updated with any developments in the investigation via this webpage.
TaskRabbit launched 10 years ago and was acquired by Ikea in September 2017. Jesper Brodin, president and CEO of Ikea Group, said at the time that his company would be able to “learn from TaskRabbit’s digital expertise, while also providing Ikea customers additional ways to access flexible and affordable service solutions to meet the needs of today’s customer.”
Those solutions include a recently launched partnership featuring a speedy service that offers customers help with Ikea furniture assembly.
We’ll update when we learn more from TaskRabbit about exactly how many of its users were caught up in the cyberattack and what information has been stolen.
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