Crowd funding site Kickstarter has become the latest high-profile victim of hackers, confirming thousands of users’ details and passwords have been stolen.
Although the company has insisted that users’ credit card details remain safe, Kickstarter has urged visitors to change their passwords as soon as possible, with hackers having gained access to personal details such as email addresses and phone numbers.
“On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers' data,” an official spokesperson for the company said in a formal statement.
“Upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system.”
Looking to reassure users, they added: “No credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers. There is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on your account.
“While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one.
“As a precaution, we strongly recommend that you change the password of your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password.”
Far from the only high-profile company to be targeted by hackers, in recent times the likes of Apple, Facebook and Sony have all been the subject of large-scale hacks.
The Kickstarter spokesperson added: “We’re incredibly sorry that this happened. We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting.”
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