Hackers steal your e-mail address from Chase, Citi, Walgreens, Best Buy, others

By Evan Asher April 4th in Blog

AVG Linkscanner Prevents Phishing

Prepare to be inundated with even more spam. Hackers have stolen the e-mail databases from Epsilon, an e-mail service provider that sends e-mails to you on behalf of such big name clients as Chase, Citibank, Walgreens, and others.  While Epsilon has sent assurances that no bank account information or other highly sensitive data was compromised, you should expect that spambots will be taking advantage of their new quarry.

There’s no way to put the Genie back into the bottle once your e-mail address is compromised, but there are steps you can take to minimize the fallout.  Be aware that spammers will send e-mails posing as these companies, hoping you’ll open attachments or click on links that will infect you or steal your login information.  To safeguard against this, do not open unsolicited attachments, and go directly to your bank’s website by manually entering their address in your browser instead of clicking on links in e-mails.

As a last line of defense, use an antivirus like AVG which includes Linkscanner technology.  This works by checking the websites that you’re accessing and warning you when they match a database of known bad sites.  This database is continuously updated, and due to the scope of this Epsilon incident, will likely be updated quickly when a phishing attempt is sent to e-mail addresses from that database.

We hope there are consequences for Epsilon and other third party email services for not safeguarding our information carefully enough.  On the bright side, it’s a good reminder to practice safe e-mail habits.