We mentioned the data breach at third-party marketer Epsilon last week that exposed the names and email addresses of customers of major credit-card issuers, Best Buy, TiVo, and many other companies opening the way for a potential spam flood or phishing attacks. According to PC World the unauthorized entry into Epsilon’s email system occurred on March 30.

I received an email from UK retailer Marks & Spencer warning me that my address had been one of those obtained by the hackers. Oddly though, the email address to which they sent the warning was the old one which I’d changed on their shopping site at least a year ago, which brings to light a couple of issues with M&S and probably every other ecommerce site. First, what are they doing handing over email addresses to cr*ppy marketing companies in the first place, especially when I most certainly ticked the box asking for no third-party marketing junk? Secondly, how come they still have a record of my old email address and didn’t send the warning to the current address? Finally, don’t they know about the Data Protection Act in the UK, which is supposed to prevent this kind of scandalous behaviour?

<rant>If you have received a “warning” email from any ecommerce company, I would suggest that it is almost certainly because the company is in breach of local internet and data privacy laws. Kick up a fuss. Complain to the authorities. Make these idiots pay.</rant>

Related articles

• Epsilon Data Breach: Millions of Email Addresses Exposed (sendblaster.com)
• Top 10 Google topic — Epsilon email breach (traveler2.typepad.com)
• I’m Getting E-Mails From Epsilon’s Clients. Are You? (technologizer.com)
• The Epsilon data breach affected millions – so what happens next? (thetechherald.com)
• Epsilon, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM EMAIL BREACH (blogsunnyside.com)
• Epsilon admits to a data breach that could affect millions (brianpennington.co.uk)
• Epsilon Data Breach (community.websense.com)
• The Epsilon Data Breach (imperva.com)
• Epsilon Email Breach: What You Should Know (tipggita32.wordpress.com)
• Email Service Provider Epsilon Hacked (clickz.com)