Canadians among millions targeted by a major security breach at U.S. firm

Canadians are among millions of customers whose personal information has been exposed after a major security breach at a U.S. marketing firm.

Best Buy has notified its customers in the U.S. and Canada that files containing their names and email addresses have been accessed by an “unauthorized party.”

The company in charge of the personal data, a Dallas marketing firm called Epsilon, said last Friday that it was investigating following the discovery of the breach of some customer client data.

Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) is warning its customers and Reward Zone members to delete email messages asking for personal information.

Air Miles Canada issued a similar warning Monday after admitting that the names and email addresses of some of their air miles collectors have been exposed.

The company said they have been assured that details of their customers’ accounts were not stored in the same system and were not at risk.

Epsilon, a leading marketing services firm, sends more than 40 billion emails a year and has more than 2,500 business clients.

The company said that while hackers had stolen customer email addresses, a rigorous assessment determined that no other personal information was compromised.

Experts say that without passwords and other sensitive data, email addresses are of little use to criminals. But they can be used to craft dangerous online attacks.

The information could help criminals send highly personalized emails to victims. Doing so makes the email more likely to get past a spam filter.

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