Amazon Suffers Pre-Black Friday Data Breach

Oh dear. Nothing takes the wind out of your sale sails like leaked customer information.

On Wednesday, it was announced that Amazon had suffered a minor system breach, allowing an outside force to access the personal information of an undisclosed (but not insignificant) number of shoppers. According to reports, things like credit card information and address were thankfully not leaked, but many users did have their private email addresses mined. The affected users received an email from Amazon support that read as such:

Email subject: Important Information about your Amazon.com Account
Hello,
We’re contacting you to let you know that our website inadvertently disclosed your email address due to a technical error. The issue has been fixed. This is not a result of anything you have done, and there is no need for you to change your password or take any other action.
Sincerely, Customer Service
http://Amazon.com

Users initially believed this email to be a phishing scam due to its notable vague-ness, but Amazon confirmed that the message was the genuine article. Internally, Amazon has not taken much damage from this incident, with little-to-no change in stock value. Customers, however, have been vocally upset on Twitter, saying that this was a very unprofessional way to inform them about the breach.

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5 years ago
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