Irish Retailer Reveals It Was Affected by International Data Breach

An Irish retailer revealed that an international data breach might have exposed some of its customers’ personal information.

On 4 July, Harvey Norman Ireland sent out a letter to customers informing them of the incident. Its correspondence didn’t disclose the number of customers potentially affected by the breach. But it did identify the types of data that were possibly compromised.

As quoted by The Irish Times:

As a result of this breach some of your personal data may have been compromised. This data includes your name, email address and your telephone number. No sensitive personal data such as payment data, bank details or passwords are involved.

Its letter traced the instance of unauthorized customer data access to a breach that occurred at Typeform, a Barcelona-based company which specializes in building online forms and surveys.

In a notice of its own, Typeform said that it detected and closed the data breach on 27 June after an unknown individual accessed one of its servers and downloaded some information. The incident affected numerous companies including UK hotel chain Travelodge and the Tasmanian Electoral College based in Australia, among others.

We’ve had a data breach. If you were affected, you will have received an email from us. Click here to learn more: https://t.co/dFVhn1nAht

We’re here to support you ❤️

— Typeform (@typeform) June 29, 2018

Typeform told the Irish arm of Harvey Norman about the breach two days after it discovered the incident. In response, Ireland’s largest retailer of furniture, computers and electronics notified the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) about the event. ODPC confirmed as much in a statement provided to The Times, stating that it had “received a breach notification from Harvey Norman” along with “other similar notifications from Irish companies.”

Harvey Norman Ireland also instructed (Read more...)