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The story
Major car-sharing company Times Car has suffered a leak of users’ driver’s license photos, raising fears the images could be used for identity theft. According to an article distributed by Kyodo News on October 2, some users are already moving toward a class-action lawsuit. On 5ch, with the company’s membership reportedly around 6.6 million people, reports that compensation would amount to roughly a ¥500 book voucher per person sparked outrage, with users calling it “insulting.” At the same time, practical questions emerged over how much real damage is even possible — whether a license photo alone is enough to take out a loan or sign a phone contract — so the discussion split between debating whether the compensation is fair and whether such misuse is actually feasible.
License Photo Leak Raises Identity Theft Fears — Times Car Faces Possible Class Action
Published 10/2 (Fri) 15:57
Kyodo News
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
If they take out a card loan [using the stolen info], it could balloon to ¥500,000–1,000,000 per person.
They should keep blasting this on TV day and night, nonstop
It's 6.6 million, actually.
If they've been stockpiling old users' info too, that's pretty messed up
Is it even legal to keep that stuff on file?
There's a limit to how much you can insult people
That's exactly why they're filing a class-action damages suit
If Times can't prove the fault wasn't theirs,
they'll be on the hook for the financial and emotional damages
Does nobody have any sympathy?
That's what 'duty to manage' [company liability for data security] means, you know
I guess the whole point is supposed to be protecting the company's own reputation afterward
Yet despite that, they're doing nothing in terms of countermeasures or compensation — makes no sense
That's exactly why they keep pushing the My Number card so hard — the law's written so the government never has to take responsibility either lol
They occasionally run first-time-only promotions,
so they have to cross-check records to exclude people reapplying for a second time
which means they were probably keeping all past members' info on file
Running first-timer-only campaigns is purely for Times' own convenience,
and keeping the data around was purely for their own convenience too lol
Does it mean 'since it's done online instead of in person, you can impersonate someone and abuse it'?
Don't you usually have to submit other documents too, so isn't there some kind of double-check in place?
So wouldn't it be true that just having a license photo leaked doesn't let the criminal do much serious damage?
I've never taken out a loan or anything like that, so I don't really get how the system works
If you can commit fraud with just a license photo, isn't the company's security way too lax?
Same here
If they're not verifying in person anyway, what's even the point of sending in the license photo?
If you wanted to borrow money, you could fake your employer info and get a loan that way, or skip borrowing directly and instead make a card and do stuff with it
Also easy targets are opening a bank account or signing up for a phone plan
If they know your address, name, and face,
they can tell if you're rich and target you
Would a rich person even use this kind of service?
Sure they would
You can even drop the car off somewhere else while you're out
Isn't Times a one-way-only service where you have to return it to where you picked it up?
People saying only poor people use this don't make any sense
Security really is an endless cat-and-mouse game
Maybe they should stop finishing everything online and do a final confirmation by mail instead
Since there's no physical original to check against, maybe you could tell it's a leaked copy if the image resolution is low?
Sounds like they're moving toward IC-chip-based smartphone verification
They can't exactly cancel their license…
Good question
I can't think of a real countermeasure, but praying or cursing them out is something you can do right away
Maybe the one small comfort is that with so many people affected, each individual's odds of actually becoming a crime victim are low?
Even the bad guys have limited bandwidth, after all
Though they'll probably just sell the data anyway
Not really a countermeasure, but switching to a different car-share service?
Then again, if everyone suddenly switches over, that service just gets harder to book too
If everyone quit Times Car, it would relatively become easier to book, though
Well, the fault lies entirely with the service provider that let the license info get misused — the person whose data was stolen bears zero responsibility lol
The worst that happens to the victim is maybe getting wrongly banned from something without even knowing why
For loans and the like, the lender is taking on a lot of risk too
Maybe keep a diary so you're covered in case your info gets misused?
Though thinking an alibi alone will be enough might be a bit naive
Is this kind of thing only this common in Japan?
The FBI leaked a personal info list of all its employees
The Department of Defense had its personnel database hacked, leaking data on 3 million people
The rest of the world operates on a completely different scale lol
Times Car is somehow outdoing a leak that shook all of America lmao
That's more than double the Pentagon's numbers lol
It's not 'the whole nation wept' — what would you even call this instead?
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The leak of images of identity documents like a driver’s license is often treated under Japan’s personal information protection law as information requiring special care, and companies find it hard to avoid liability for damages unless they can prove the leak wasn’t their fault. Where opinions in the thread diverged was over just how directly the image leak itself translates into real-world harm. Many services don’t complete identity verification with a license photo alone — misuse often requires going through additional steps like opening a bank account or signing a loan contract — so views split over how to gauge the actual scale of potential damage. Posters also cited differing figures for the membership count and compensation amount, and the article text alone doesn’t make clear which numbers reflect the company’s latest official statement. A point readers may easily misunderstand is that an image leak doesn’t immediately translate into financial loss — whether the stolen data can actually be pushed through subsequent contract procedures is what determines whether the misuse succeeds.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “[Times Car] License Photo Leak Raises Identity Theft Fears, Possible Class Action.”
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