Epsilon attacked exposing customer names and emails

Written By: Nadia Ibanez

Hackers took over email marketing company Epsilon over the weekend and while you probably haven’t heard of the company, I guarantee you know of all of the companies they service. Epsilon says that an unauthorized party came into their system on Friday in order to expose its customer names and email addresses that were then at risk to an increase in spam and phishing attacks. Some of Epsilon’s clients include Capital One, J.P. Morgan Chase, TiVo, Best Buy, US Bank, Marriott, Walgreens, Disney Destinations, Kroger, and about 2,500 others.

Epsilon issued a statement saying: "A rigorous assessment determined that no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk. A full investigation is currently underway."

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Epsilon clients, such as TiVo, Best Buy and Disney Destinations have already sent out notices over the weekend to assure customers that customers' credit card information has not been compromised. Disney sent out the following message to customers warning them of possible spam or malware:

"As a result of this incident, it is possible that you may receive spam e-mail messages, e-mails that contain links containing computer viruses or other types of computer malware, or emails that seek to deceive you into providing personal or credit card information."

While social security numbers or credit cards were part of the attack, users now have an increased risk of phishing attacks, which could end up in further damage if customers aren’t savvy on how to protect themselves from spam risk.

Epsilon hasn’t released any of its clients’ names that were affected by the breach of security, but we can imagine that many consumers across the nation are stepping up their anti-phishing programs to avoid getting their contact strewn about the Internet. Some clients have reached out to customers already, and surely other security emails will be sent out in the coming days to address concerns.