Epsilon security breach puts millions of email addresses at risk

I bet the first thing you thought when you read this is how in the world could something like this happen to a company like Epsilon that handles tons of very large clients like Best Buy, Citigroup, Barclays, TiVo, and in my case in this mornings email, Hilton Honors:

Here’s what they had to say on Friday:

Epsilon Notifies Clients of Unauthorized Entry into Email System

IRVING, TEXAS – April 1, 2011 – On March 30th, an incident was detected where a subset of Epsilon clients’ customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry into Epsilon’s email system. The information that was obtained was limited to email addresses and/or customer names only. A rigorous assessment determined that no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk. A full investigation is currently underway.

Epsilon is maintaining that only names and email addresses were compromised and that no credit card, social security, passwords, or other sensitive information was hacked.

We’ll keep you posted with more information.