Epsilon Data Management, an email marketing firm used by companies such as Barclays Bank, Capital One Financial, JP Morgan Chase, TiVo, Best Buy and HSN had a security breach on March 30th, 2011.
According to Epsilon:
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.
On April 3rd, 2011 Best Buy notified its customers through email:
Dear Valued Best Buy Customer,
On March 31, we were informed by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails to our customers, that files containing the email addresses of some Best Buy customers were accessed without authorization.
Unfortunately, Best Buy took the opportunity to advertise its own Geek Squad Service on the email.
For your security, however, we wanted to call this matter to your attention. We ask that you remain alert to any unusual or suspicious emails. As our experts at Geek Squad would tell you, be very cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown senders.
Seriously, Best Buy? Can you advertise your Geek Squad service some other time?