Virgin Media customers were asked to change their passwords after a data breach left 900,000 customers personal information unsecured. The company stated that information such as customer names, home and email addresses, and phone numbers were accessed through a database.
Nearly a million Virgin Media customers will be justifiably concerned to learn that their personal information has been accessible and insecure since last summer.
A recent investigation found that it was relatively difficult for hackers to compromise a router that many Virgin Media users have. The British service provider took the drastic step after ethical security researchers had access to Virgin Media in less than 3 days.
Virgin Media customers who were affected by the violation are now unsure of how much data was breached. The database, which was used for marketing purposes was accessed by an unauthorized person after being misconfigured.
The Statement Of Virgin Media
The company said: “We recently noticed that one of our marketing databases was misconfigured, which allowed unauthorized access. We immediately solved the problem by blocking access to this database. We urge people to stay cautious before clicking an unknown link or providing details to an unverified or unknown person.”
Almost one year is a long time to make information that is useful for cyber criminals, such as phone numbers and email addresses, available online. Although it is fortunate that only an unknown user accessed the information during this time, only one person is required to sell this information to cybercriminals.
How To Secure Yourself?
Using a virtual private network makes it almost impossible for cybercriminals to hack your devices connected to the internet. Once you connect to a server, your public IP address is hidden and your entire internet connection is encrypted. Thanks to user-friendly applications, connecting to servers has become quite easy.
