As if he doesn’t have enough breaches to report on, Lee J. (@Cyber_War_News on Twitter) just received a breach notification letter from Gumtree Australia, an online classified ads site. Lee shared it on Pastebin:
Dear Lee,
We are writing to let you know that some of your Gumtree account information was compromised in a security attack last weekend. The attackers accessed your email address. Contact names and phone numbers, which are made publicly available on the site if provided, were also accessed.
Your Gumtree account password was not accessed. Payment details were also not compromised; we don’t store any payment information on our site.
We resolved the isolated attack within minutes of discovering it and since then we’ve taken extra steps to protect your information.
We encourage you to follow the tips below to help protect yourself from scam and phishing attempts:
1. Watch out for phishing scams: Phishing scammers use fraudulent emails or SMS to trick users to access fake websites or share personal information in the hope of accessing private account or login information. You can find more information about phishing scams here.
2. Keep your account details secure: Choose usernames and passwords carefully and don’t use the same sign-in information for more than one online account.
3. Spotting a fake email: Fake emails can include a company logo and will usually ask you to reply to the message with confidential information or ask you to change a password. They may even include an attachment. Gumtree will never send you a link to change your password unless you click the ‘Forgot your password’ option on the site.
4. Reporting fake emails: Please report suspicious emails which you don’t think are from Gumtree. Simply forward to [email protected] so we can investigate and de-activate any fake site links. Do not click on links or take any other action requested in those suspicious emails.
The safety of our community remains our number one priority and we apologise that you’ve been affected by this. For more information about staying safe online, visit Gumtree’s Scam Security Centre.
If you have any queries about this email, please contact us here.
Sincerely,
Gumtree Australia