Nate Cochrane reports:
TripAdvisor.com is the latest organisation to fall prey to hackers, who made off with the popular travel site’s member email list.
SC Magazine recommends TripAdvisor subscribers change their passwords as a precaution but not to click on any links from emails purporting to be from the travel community site. You may see an increase in spam in coming weeks that could contain malware or direct you to malicious sites so be suspicious of emails in general and click with caution.
In an email purporting to be from its chief executive officer Steve Kaufer sent to customers today, the site that bills itself as “Most Trusted” said the list was stolen last weekend and that it has since closed the source of the vulnerability. But it did not say what the vulnerability was or what it did to ensure it didn’t again leak its customers’ personal information.
Kaufer said “only a portion” of its member list was stolen but declined to say what percentage of users were compromised. TripAdvisor’s website said it had 20 million members, received 40 million unique visitors a month and operated in 27 countries.
Read more on SCMagazine. See also TripAdvisor’s statement on their web site.
A copy of TripAdvisor’s email to customers was sent to DataBreaches.net by one of the recipients:
From: TripAdvisor <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 9:27 AM
Subject: An important message from our CEO
To: [redacted]This past weekend we discovered that an unauthorized third party had stolen part of TripAdvisor’s member email list. We’ve confirmed the source of the vulnerability and shut it down. We’re taking this incident very seriously and are actively pursuing the matter with law enforcement.
How will this affect you? In many cases, it won’t. Only a portion of all member email addresses were taken, and all member passwords remain secure. You may receive some unsolicited emails (spam) as a result of this incident.
The reason we are going directly to you with this news is that we think it’s the right thing to do. As a TripAdvisor member, I would want to know. Unfortunately, this sort of data theft is becoming more common across many industries, and we take it extremely seriously.
I’d also like to reassure you that TripAdvisor does not collect members’ credit card or financial information, and we never sell or rent our member list.
We will continue to take all appropriate measures to keep your personal information secure at TripAdvisor. I sincerely apologize for this incident and appreciate your membership in our travel community.
Steve Kaufer
Co-founder and CEO
More information