Ina Steiner writes:
In an email sent to shoppers this week, “Fresh Offerings from Your Favorite Shops,” Etsy mistakenly included the names of sellers taken from their credit card information on file. No other credit card information was included in the email.
It’s not clear how it happened since all credit card information should be encrypted on Etsy’s servers. Sellers are calling into question how safe their information (sic). Wrote one seller, “If this was a simple error due to an engineer’s inputting of an incorrect data field (credit card name), then would it also be possible for a similar mistake to be made with a different incorrect data field? In other words, could our credit card numbers just as easily be broadcast in an Etsy marketing email?”
Read more on eCommerceBytes.
This is not Etsy’s first breach involving sellers’ information. In September 2010, I reported on another breach that also exposed sellers’ names instead of shop names.