Epsilon, an email marketing and service provider which contracts with some of largest retail and financial companies in the nation, has reported that their networks have been breached.
The company states that their systems experienced an unauthorized access event that has exposed the names and email addresses of the customers the company's clients serve.
Epsilon sends more than forty billion marketing and advertising emails yearly on behalf of dozens of companies. Initial reports indicate that no financial data was revealed in the breach.
Companies who's customer information may have been compromised by the breach include:
- Barclays Bank of Delaware
- Brookstone
- Capital One
- Citi
- Disney Destinations
- Home Shopping Network
- JPMorgan Chase
- Kroger
- LL Bean
- Marriott Rewards
- McKinsey & Company
- New York & Company
- Ritz-Carlton Rewards
- The College Board
- TiVo
- US Bank
- Walgreens
Most of the affected companies have already began notifying their customers of the event, advising that they be wary of an increase in spam emails and the potential for scams and phishing operations.
The following is an example of an alert email distributed by Barclays:
"It is possible you may receive spam email messages as a result which could potentially ask you for additional information about your account. Please note, Barclays will never ask you in an email to verify sensitive information such as your full account number, Username, Password or Social Security Number. Therefore, any email which does so should be treated suspiciously, even if it looks like it comes from Barclays. As a reminder, we urge you to be cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown third parties."
Source: http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22431
