macy

Macy’s Customer Data Exposed After October Website Hack

The department store chain is notifying customers that hackers were able to scrape credit card data from online purchases for about a week.

  • By Haley Samsel
  • Nov 21, 2019

Ahead of the holiday shopping season, Macy’s is not feeling the Christmas cheer. That’s because the department store’s website was the target of a cyber attack in October, according to a letter that Macy’s sent to affected customers.

On Oct. 15, Macy’s security teams were alerted to a connection between macys.com and another website. After investigating, the company realized that an unauthorized third party added unauthorized computer code to two pages on macys.com a week earlier on Oct. 7.

The code allowed the third party to capture information submitted by customers either through the checkout page and or the “wallet page,” where customers store their credit card information on their Macy’s accounts.

While the code was promptly removed on Oct. 15, hackers were still able to gather the names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and payment card numbers of customers who typed that information into the checkout page or the “My Account” wallet page.

Macy’s has not said how many customers were affected, and the chain has taken the case to federal law enforcement. After the incident was announced on Tuesday, Macy’s shares fell by nearly 11 percent, CBS News reported.

In a letter to affected customers, the company said that it is offering identity protection services for 12 months free of charge and has taken steps to keep future cyber attacks at bay.

“We have taken steps that we believe are designed to prevent this type of unauthorized code from being added to macys.com,” the letter reads.

This is the second security breach that Macy’s has suffered in the past two years. In the spring of 2018, hackers were able to gain access to customers’ usernames and passwords through both macys.com and bloomingdales.com for over a month. Back then, the company said it had also implemented new security measures to protect customer data.

About the Author

Haley Samsel is an Associate Content Editor for the Infrastructure Solutions Group at 1105 Media.

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