We’ve published our findings from our diversity workshop held earlier on in the year. Thank you to Kathryn for writing it up!
Category Archives: Press Release
Typeform Survey Data Breach
We received a message that Typeform had a data breach, which affected one or more of the surveys that we published. Typeform reports that an external attacker managed to get unauthorized access to a partial backup of respondent data and downloaded it.
The two forms affected were our Tech Survey and this year’s Conference speaker submissions.
The good news is that Typeform responded immediately and fixed the source of the breach to prevent any further intrusion. The bad news is that any information submitted in the forms could have been leaked – this includes mandatory responses like including name, email address and optional responses such as gender, ethnicity, age bracket, phone number etc.
What are you doing so this doesn’t happen again?
We will no longer be using Typeform as a platform for collecting responses that contain sensitive data, and instead be using Google Forms or Survey Monkey. Whilst no provider can guarantee that there won’t be a data breach, we feel that we can’t comfortably continue using the Typeform platform.
How widespread was the breach?
Many organisations use Typeform including Apple, Uber, Airbnb, and Nike. Affected in this breach (so far) are companies including Monzo (20,000 users), Crowdcube, Starling Bank, Post*Shift, the Tasmanian Electoral Commission … so we are by no means the only organisation affected.
What are you doing right now?
We have sent out emails to all affected individuals and released this statement on our website. As gender and ethnicity data were part of the data collected in the Tech Survey form, we will shortly also be notifying the ICO of the breach.
Would exercising my GDPR right to be forgotten have helped me?
No. Information from a third party’s backup was stolen, so whilst we wouldn’t still have your data, the backup would have contained it. And what’s more – we would no longer have your details to contact you about it!
What should I do now?
We recommend that you watch out for potential phishing scams, or spam emails, so be extra careful to only open messages that come from people or companies you know and trust.
Further information from Typeform can be found at https://www.typeform.com/data-breach-june-2018/
If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us . We’re sincerely sorry for any inconvenience this causes.
Tech Nation 2018 survey
Help to keep Exeter on the national TechNation UK map – they want to hear from you on topics such as diversity of the tech sector, opportunities for high growth businesses and the quality of education and training. It only takes 5 minutes!
> https://streetbees.formstack.com/forms/tech_city_partners
And if you like answering surveys, why not also take our more in depth delve into to local tech scene by taking our very own survey : https://techexeter.uk/2017/help-us-take-our-survey/. We’ve had over 150 responses so far, and we’ll be releasing the data as open data for everyone to look at.
Help us – take our survey!
We need your help.
Rob and I are constantly being asked all sorts about the local tech industry (for potential project work, events and opportunities) and we’ve come to the conclusion that despite knowing a fair few of you, we just don’t have all the answers!
We’d like to get to know you better – and we want to do this is in the most transparent way possible. Answering this questionnaire will give us a better idea of the types of people that make up Exeter’s awesome tech community.
Also – you’ll be helping to publish our first set of open data, allowing everyone to have a peek at the technical make-up of the Greater Exeter area.
SURVEY IS NOW CLOSED – THANK YOU!
Results will be published soon.
Results will be published soon.
Check our our FAQ
Tech meetup group rebrands and opens co-working space
Popular tech meetup group ExeterWeb has re-branded as TechExeter and opened up a new co-working space in the heart of the city. With strong ties to the community, TechExeter is set to become an essential resource for tech companies large and small.
The co-working space opened on the 2nd of May and offers desk space in the centre of Southernhay starting from £80 per month. “What we’ve done is to create a space that not only has great facilities for people to rent, but one that actively supports those who work in the tech industry, whether they are software developers, data analysts or web start-ups” says Kris Sum, co-founder of TechExeter. “We’ve got a hacker space for developing hardware prototypes, shelves of tech books, a lightning-fast network, plus I’m on hand to answer any technical queries”.
For two years, Kris and co-founder Rob Glover have worked growing the Exeter Web meetup community and its sister group Digital Exeter, which together now total over 1000 members. “We started as a social meetup group focused around web technology, but we felt that re-branding to TechExeter would be a much better fit for what we actually get involved with today” Rob explains. “We now run regular meetups with lightning-talks on a huge range of tech topics including engineering, computing and data science, and that’s reflected by our massively talented pool of members including people from the Met Office, FlyBe, Crowdcube and the University of Exeter”.
With the continued success of their sell-out meetup events, there’s even talk about running a conference. “We’re very much in the early stages, but we’re very excited and have teamed up with some excellent partners to provide our community with the great conference it deserves.” says Kris. “We can’t reveal all of the things we have in store, but I can say it will be a ticketed one-day event taking place in Exeter during this Autumn, with multiple tracks, workshops and hands-on sessions”.
