Canadian Customers of Best Buy and Tivo at Risk from Massive Email Hack
Written BY: Brett Booen
Epsilon, a Dallas-based provider of permission based email services, was hacked starting last Wednesday. Email addresses from Canadian customers of large corporations such as Best Buy and Tivo as well as others were stolen in a massive breach.
Large corporations that have been affected started informing customers by email last Friday.
“On March 31, we were informed by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails to our customers, that files containing the email addresses of some Best Buy customers were accessed without authorization,” said an official Best Buy email sent to customers.
Epsilon informed corporations that the breach only accessed customer email addresses and that no other information was acquired.
“A rigorous assessment determined that no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk. A full investigation is currently underway,” said an Epsilon press release”
Customers may receive spam emails as a result of the hack and are therefore being informed to be wary of emails sent from unknown addresses and cautious when opening links or attachments. It is speculated that hackers may try to use the emails in “phishing” attempts by using authentic looking emails to acquire sensitive customer information such as usernames, passwords, credit card details, etc.
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Additionally, the breach also has affected companies and corporations based in the US. These include JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, Barclays Bank, Citigroup, Walgreens, LL Bean, Ritz-Carlton, Marriot Rewards, Brookstone, Disney Destination, New York & Company, Home Shopping Network, Kroger and Robert Half.
Epsilon is a unit of Alliance Data Co that sends 40 billion emails annually for 2500 clients.
