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Acer Data Breach: Acer Hacked, 34,500 Customers’ Info Compromised

By Jean Mendoza
Published on: 22:52 PST, Jun 20, 2016

If you bought something from Acer’s online store in the past year, then your sensitive information may be compromised. Computer manufacturer Acer announced that hackers broke into their online store to steal customers’ sensitive information. The company wrote a notice of data breach letter to the California Attorney General’s office explaining the incident.

“We recently identified a security issue involving the information of certain customers who used our ecommerce site between May 12, 2015 and April 28, 2016, which resulted in unauthorized access by a third party.”

According to Computer Business Review, some of the information that was compromised in the data breach include the names, addresses, credit card numbers, three-digit CVC security numbers, and the expiry dates of credit cards. The letter states that usernames and passwords, as well as Social Security numbers, were not affected by the data breach.

Those who are affected by the Acer data breach include customers who purchased items from the North American Acer online store between the dates stated in the company’s letter. According to PC World, 34,500 customers are affected, and they are based in Puerto Rico, Canada, and the U.S. According to a spokesperson from Acer, all customers whose information was compromised have already been alerted through a letter that details information about the data breach and the different steps that can be done to prevent being a victim of identity theft.

The Acer data breach letter also includes information on what the company is doing to fix the situation.

“Safeguarding your personal information is important to us. We took immediate steps to remediate this security issue upon identifying it, and we are being assisted by outside cyberseucurity experts.”

In addition, Acer said that they have already reported the data breach to their credit card payment processor. Federal law enforcement has also been called to investigate the breach, and Acer said that are giving their full cooperation during the ongoing investigation.

Slash Gear reports that Acer has not revealed any details regarding the hackers. More information is expected to be released when the investigation into the matter is over.

In an interview with SC Magazine, Mark Bower, the Global Director at HPE Data Security, said that there are technologies to lessen the chance of a security breach happening.

“Thousands of leading merchants and well-known, name-brand online stores throughout the world have already adopted these approaches with great success, either on premises or through payment processors services — with them, the risk of an attack being successful is absolutely minimized — attackers get nothing of value, just meaningless random data.”

Bower also stated that Acer had no reason to store customers’ credit card information in their system.

Victims of the Acer data breach can file a police report. Acer urges those who purchased from the store during said time period to check their account statements and monitor credit reports to see if there are purchases made without their consent. Those who suspect that their credit card information has been stolen are urged to place a fraud alert or a security freeze.

Acer is not the only company who experienced a breach lately. Just last month, LinkedIn announced that a security breach had compromised 100 million of their users’ passwords. The networking service urged their users to change their passwords, especially those who have not changed theirs since 2012.

[Photo by Brian A. Jackson/Shutterstock]

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