San Francisco waste-hauling firm Recology suffered a cybersecurity breach, the company said on Monday.
A spokesperson for the company, which operates a waste and recycling monopoly in San Francisco, said that it “experienced a cybersecurity incident that has caused some systems and applications to be temporarily unavailable.
“We are in the process of investigating this incident and carefully bringing applications back online,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding.”
The company did not immediately clarify whether customer data had been compromised or the exact nature of any system interruptions.
However, some customers noted disruptions that may have been connected to the hack: A writer for the San Francisco Business Times reported that Recology workers blamed system issues for a delay in a melted bin being picked up.
@RecologySF got an email saying system has been down will respond soon two weeks ago I sent that today I got the reply which did not address the issues so I called they claim system problems WTH?
— ReyOnGrove (@reyeuro) November 13, 2023
Service crews remain in the field, and refuse collection continues, the company said.
It isn’t the first time that Recology has been impacted by a data breach.
In February 2021, the company notified Recology customers in King County about a ransomware attack on an invoicing application called Automatic Funds Transfer Service (AFTS). Customer data was not taken in the incident, but payments were temporarily disrupted.