PlusNet exposes customers’ personal data
Published July 27th, 2006
From http://www.adslguide.org.uk/
“PlusNet who operate a number of virtual providers including Force9 accidentally emailed the personal details of around 20,000 customers to a list of up to 1,800 customers. It appears the issue was first raised publicly by users on our forums yesterday lunchtime.
The information sent out was in a comma separated spreadsheet format and contained the following fields: “service_id”,”username”,”full_name”,”product_name”,”subscription_charge”, “postmaster_email”,”alt_email”,”visp”,”optout_status”,
“active_status”,”real_name”.
PlusNet are understood to be emailing those affected to apologise and ensure they are aware of what information was leaked. Fortunately, whilst this is a serious incident, it should be pointed out that no credit card, banking or postal address information appears to have being leaked so whilst this is very embarrassing for the company, the damage will be limited. They advise those who may have received the e-mail with the file to delete it.
One Force9 customer who requested to remain anonymous said “I am still a little stunned as to how a company can be so incompetent.” and has requested a MAC code to migrate to another provider. This event is the second serious incident with PlusNet’s service. Recently, the company lost up to 700GB of e-mail .”
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