Names and email addresses of Canadian and U.S. customers of Best Buy, some banks and other firms have been exposed in a data breach.
Best Buy Canada and Victoria, B.C.-based AbeBooks were among the companies that sent emails Monday to Canadian customers informing them that hackers may have gained access to their files after a data breach at Dallas, Tex.-based marketing and communications firm, Epsilon.
The company, which bills itself as “the world’s largest email marketing provider,” says it sends over 40 billion emails annually on behalf of 2,500 clients.
Other companies who sent emails to clients saying they may be affected by the breach include major U.S. banks and credit-card issuers Capital One, Barclays Bank, U.S. Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup, along with hotel chain Marriott International Inc., Walt Disney Co.’s travel subsidiary Disney Destinations, TiVo Inc., Kroger Co. and Walgreen Co. Read More…
@dave – actually that depends on a number of conditions:
1) those sites are foolish enough to use emails addresses as login ids instead of a user created id.
2) dont have a set retry attempts before failing (most sites do)
3) the customer has a weak password in place.
It would be very difficult.
The most important thing everyone needs to remember is to NOT give out any personal information to ANYONE…even if they claim to be your own family since it is way too easy these days to get at our details and use it against us!
Be careful when online!
I was getting a bit scared there. I was thinking that the actual sites were an issue and one shouldnt visit them. I visit many of these places.
What’s odd is i have been receiving a lot of these compromised emails for many places as of late. It seems this problem has been far reaching. Weird times we are in.
Tanya, most people have more than 1 email address. For example i have 4 that i use regularly. But it is plausible that some cats can have their own too. Typing kitay! MEOW! 🙂
The article fails to mention that if email addresses are compromised these people could use them to potentially log into accounts at these companies through brute force techniques.
I am amazed that this one company has 40 billion emails to work with. Arent there only 7 billion people on the planet? Are cats and dogs signing up too?
Actually if they have ones email they could technically trick you within facebook or whereever too.
Sounds like someone is trying to grow their botnet by scraping for email addresses. Not good.
No it only applies to regular email. Social networks and twitter are not affected.
Does this apply to messages received in Facebook too?
This has to be the 3rd major data breach this year. Going down memory lane Epsilon has had security problems for years.
I could have sworn i was asked for personal information from Best Buy in the past so now i am being told that they should never ask for such information?
grumpy, did you even read the entire article? It says that only email addresses were exposed. Which just means you could be getting milicious email posing as Best Buy or whoever to trick you to install their evil app.
I am confused…maybe someone can explain. How is a breach at a marketing provider a concern to average consumers?
Is best buy and others so dumb to store their customers login and credit card details with a marketer?!?!?
Statistically most people will just ignore these email warnings and continue on their merry way not realizing that their account has been compromised and they will be stuck with a $2,000 bill at the end of the month.
“bills itslef as ‘the world’s largest email marketing provider'”
at least we now know where all the spam in my inbox is coming from.
I received the email yesterday (Sunday). I am now debating if i should cancel my credit card since it was stored on BB for a few years now.
Any tips?
What’s worse is that i not only have an online account at Best Buy but i shop at AbeBooks here in BC. It’s like something is out to get me 🙁
Well lucky for me all my emails are filtered through a 3rd party before i ever see it so no worries since no one has my real email address.
Lets be honest, every company at one time or another is going to experience a security breach.
It is all in the course of time. Nothing new to see here kids, move along.
This is why i stopped shopping at Best Buy. Always some new shyit like this!