Thousands of Credit Cards Stolen from Acer Online Store

Thousands of Credit Cards Stolen from Acer Online Store

  • By Sydny Shepard
  • Jun 20, 2016

When you buy something from an online store, especially an online store that specializes in technology, you are expecting the site’s servers to be as secure as possible. You willingly give an online store your name, email address, mailing address and even your credit card information. That data is exactly what hackers stole from 34,000 Acer customers.

Acer, a Taiwanese PC maker, as admitted it has found a third party that has gained access to customer information that includes name, address, card number, expiration date and three-digit security code. That information is all that is needed to make a remote purchase from any online store, putting Acer customers in the worst possible situation and marking a particularly bad lapse in Acer’s data safeguards.

The company released a letter to customers of its online store stating that anyone who bought anything from Acer’s North American web store between May 12, 2015 and April 28, 2016 may have their information breached.  

Login and password details haven’t been identified as part of the data breach, but the company hasn’t ruled out the possibility.

Acer hasn’t revealed how the breach started, but it is more likely that an employee opened an infected email than a fancy hacking operation.


About the Author

Sydny Shepard is the Executive Editor of Campus Security & Life Safety.

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