Data. breach. These two small words can cause a BIG problem
for businesses, especially those who house their consumers information for
purchasing reasons. The popular online retailer, Zappos.com, just recently felt
the wrath of a data
breach that happened right here in Kentucky. It is unknown exactly when the
breach happened but was stated to have affected 24 million people. The company
took immediate action as soon as they were aware of the attack. They chose to
disconnect all phone lines and communicate with their disgruntled consumers via
email in order to avoid an
overload of calls.
So what happens now? Well, as you can imagine those 24
million customers are not only a little angry, but worried about identity
theft. It was reported that the hackers were able to get a hold of
usernames, passwords, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and the last
four digits of credit cards. This information may seem like a lot, but what can
someone really do with only the last four digits of a card? The answer is, a
lot. Zappos urged their customers to change usernames and passwords immediately
to avoid further breaching. They also strongly suggested changing credentials to
other sites using similar information to their Zappos login to avoid theft from
other accounts.
Without the proper fraud prevention
measures, the amount of information gained through this breach would be
sufficient enough for further damage. This is why ID authentication is so
important when preventing identity theft. Even with someones full name,
address, password, and phone number, ID
authentication asks a series of questions that only the true identity
holder would know. Zappos is doing all they can to repair the distrust from
their consumers and hopefully will look into other ID
verification and authentication measures to prevent this from happening
again.
