Don't Take The Bait

Do to the recent activity with companies being breached and email databases being stolen I thought it would be a good time to remind email users to be careful when reading email.

For those that may not know there have been security breaches at multiple marketing companies.  These include Play.com, Silverpop and more recently Epsilon.  One of the services that these marketing companies provide is email distribution for their customers.  The customers of these companies include but are not limited to McDonalds, US Bank, JPMorgan Chase, TiVo, Capital One, the Home Shopping Network, LL Bean Visa Card, Ritz-Carlton Rewards, Best Buy, Disney Destinations, Walgreens, Citi, College Board and many more.  If you have ever signed up with one of the above companies you may receive an email from them stating that your information may have been exposed to unauthorized access.  It is being reported by some of the companies that only names and email addresses were compromised and no personally identifiable information was released.

Because of the recent breaches you may receive more spam and phishing emails.  Click here to see a short guide that will help you to identify email scams.

As a precaution, I also recommend taking this time to review all of your online accounts to make sure that complex passwords are in use.