It is never nice when you find out something that affects you second hand, but that’s just what has happened for thousands of Acer buyers when the company revealed that they had been hacked in a recent revelation to California’s Attorney General that it had been subject to an in-depth security breach.
The security breach included some very sensitive information for around 34,500 customers based in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The data stolen includes customers names, addresses and credit card details including expiry dates and the cards three-digit CVC security code.
With no details on how the hack was accomplished, Acer only lists that it was due to an unspecified “security issue”, the company did reveal just how much data was breached. The hackers managed to obtain not just a small chunk of data but data ranging from May 12th, 2015 all the way to April 28th, 2016, equalling almost a years worth of purchases from their site being exposed online.
Acer informed PCWorld that the data’s theft could be traced back to the company because they had “inadvertently stored [the customers data] in an unsecured format”. With all this information it would be possible to make purchases through your cards, thanks in particular to the date and CVC codes also stored. Our recommendation is if you bought anything off the Acer website either directly within the time window or just outside of it, check your statements careful and cancel any cards you notice unauthorised payments on.
