50 Million Impacted in LivingSocial Data Breach
Kara Swisher of AllThingsD.com reports that LivingSocial, a daily deals site owned in part by Amazon, has suffered a massive data breach involving the names, email addresses, birth dates, and encrypted passwords of 50 million customers. No credit card or financial information was lost, luckily, but this is just another example of why it’s essential to create a different strong password for every Web site and Internet service. Read Joe Kissell’s “Take Control of Your Passwords” for a complete password strategy.
As I commented over at AllThingsD:
"I received an email from these guys saying I should reset my password. I have never had an account with them, but in case my memory failed me (old age), I entered my email and got a message that i didn't have an account with them yet, and a page to fill out to open one. I declined."
If they are associated with Amazon, perhaps that is where they got my email. Seems spammy in any event.
That is troubling. My gut feeling is that it's probably not related to Amazon so much as LivingSocial perhaps having email addresses for people who haven't yet signed up - an email marketing database in essence. But whatever the reason, this may be a serious problem for LivingSocial going forward, especially as these daily deals sites wane in popularity in general.