Security breach exposes personal information of Honda, Acura customers

[Gh0stRider]

Security breach exposes personal information of Honda, Acura customers

The personal information of hundreds of thousands of Honda and Acura customers may have been compromised by a security breach of the automaker's computer systems, it was learned Friday.

In a notice to customers, both Honda and Acura — which is a division of Honda — announced that "the incident involved the unauthorized access of information as held in our records in 2009, specifically name, address, Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), and in a small number of cases, Honda Financial Services account numbers."

Honda Canada said Friday that 283,321 customers are potentially affected by the breach, which involved a 2009 customer mailing program. The company noted, however, that the breach occurred recently.

A hotline to handle concerns or questions from customers — 1-800-839-2826 — was set up on May 16.

"The information was limited and is not typically used for the purposes of identity theft or fraud," Jerry Chenkin, Honda Canada's executive vice-president, said in an statement. "We would like to sincerely apologize to our Canadian customers for this incident. Honda and Acura are working diligently to protect our customers' personal information and improve our data security procedures on an ongoing basis."

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada was notified by the company about the breach and has also fielded concerns from some individual customers, a spokeswoman said Friday.

The company said customers who may be affected by the breach were being contacted by mail, but added that customers should be aware of potential contact from third-party groups as a result of the unauthorized access to Honda and Acura records.

"We do not recommend that customers take any specific action at this time, other than being alert for marketing campaigns from third parties that reference your ownership of a Honda vehicle," Honda Canada wrote in its notice to customer. "Honda does not share its customer information with unauthorized third parties and does not contact customers asking for financial information."

Earlier this spring, the personal information of about one million Canadians was compromised when the Sony PlayStation Network was breached.

The massive theft of customer data affected roughly 75 million members of the network worldwide and involved email addresses, birthdates and network passwords of an unknown number of users.

Credit and debit information may also have been compromised, but Sony Canada has not released any details about how Canadian PlayStation users may have been affected.

After the breach, Sony Online Entertainment temporarily shut down its online games service. It has since resumed operations.



Read more: http://www.canada.com/Security+breac...#ixzz1NateFITj

i got a letter from them this week about it.

anyone else?