Online marketer Epsilon gets hacked

The online marketing company Epsilon was hacked, exposing thousands of its clients’ names and e-mail addresses. Now authorities are trying to make sure that no harm comes to the clients

The online marketing company, Epsilon got hacked recently showcasing the vulnerability of the internet. Epsilon is an internet marketing giant that had many famous companies as its clients, and now all of them have been exposed to the risk of information theft.

Some of the companies which are the clients of Epsilon are Citigroup Inc, College Board, Walgreens, TiVo Inc, Capital One Financial Corp, HSN Inc, J.P. Morgan Chase, Disney and Kroger.

All these companies have stepped forward to warn their customers about the Epsilon hacking, so that they are aware of any mysterious actions which may take place over the next few days.

As yet, it has not been established who hacked Epsilon, however, one thing is for sure and that is that the hacker was not an employee of the company. The information which was stolen just consisted of people’s names and their e-mail addresses and thankfully, no credit card information or social security numbers were stolen.

The Epsilon hacking incident is being considered to be one of the biggest internet security breaches in the history of the United States and it shows how sensitive this data is - and how easily it can be lost.

Epsilon also manages the accounts of some students affiliated with the US-based College Board. College Board administers the SAT aptitude tests and this particular organization is in contact with more than 7 million students. The students were also contacted about Epsilon’s security breach and were asked not to open links pointing to suspicious third parties.

Law enforcement authorities have already started investigating into the matter and in this regard, Epsilon has volunteered to lend its full support. "While we are cooperating with authorities and doing a thorough investigation, we cannot say anything else," said Epsilon spokeswoman Jessica Simon. "We can't confirm any impacted or non-impacted clients, or provide a list (of companies) at this point in time."