Epsilon Data Management Security Breach and Best Buy’s Subliminal Geek Squad Advertisement.

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?

Dropbox and Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 2.

From Dropbox forum:

This version causes crashes in the latests developer preview of Lion. If you are using a developer preview we advise against running this version. We’re working on a solution. Thanks.

Previously, Dropbox can be used with Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview (1) by changing the CFBundleVersion to 2.0. Apple Engineers warned that Mac OS X Lion blocked Dropbox from running due to some technical issue. Even though the modified Dropbox could run on Mac OS X Lion DP, it crashes the Finder.

Dropbox Engineers are aware of this issue.

Apple Explains White iPhone 4.5

On the First Day of April 2010 short of 10 months after iPhone 4 was introduced, Apple quietly releases details on the elusive White iPhone 4.

Introducing iPhone 4.5 with features such as:

  • This time it comes in White, for real.
  • Slightly lighter than iPhone 4.
  • Stronger Glass.
  • Available for GSM and CDMA.
  • New attenuation reduction coating.
  • Photo Booth.

When asked about iPhone 5, an Apple Executive who is definitely not Phil Schiller said:

“When we figured out how to make White iPhone 4 correctly back in December 2010, we decided to take our time working on iPhone 5. Besides we were planning to release iPhone 4 on Verizon in January 2011. We are proud of iPhone 4 breakthrough design and we want to take it further. We already finished with the design for iPhone 5 and it is currently being rigorously tested. Trust me when I say that Apple would not let anyone took the iPhone 5 testing unit to any bars. Some person from certain web-site might want to have it stolen. Anyway, we have pin-pointed one source of the leak on our end. For sure Scott or Greg or Chris or Matt or Phil or Steve won’t be talking to the blogger anymore. That 36composite site will no longer get any leaks from Apple.  Anyway, buy iPhone 4.5 this June, it comes also in white.”

iPhone 4.5 will go on sale after WWDC 2011 Keynote.