April 4, 2011

Attention Target.com and Walgreens.com customers!!

A head’s up. Please please read. I got these emails from BOTH Target and Walgreens (kind of waiting to see what other companies use Epsilon at this point- wondering how many more emails we’ll get) within 10 minutes of one another today!

Dear Valued Customer,

On March 30th, we were informed by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails to our customers, that files containing the email addresses of some Walgreens customers were accessed without authorization.

We have been assured by Epsilon that the only information that was obtained was your email address. No other personally identifiable information was at risk because such data is not contained in Epsilon’s email system.

For your security, we encourage you to be aware of common email scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Walgreens will not send you emails asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. If ever asked for this information, you can be confident it is not from Walgreens.

We regret this has taken place and any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you have any questions regarding this issue, please contact us at 1-855-814-0010. We take your privacy very seriously, and we will continue to work diligently to protect your personal information.

Sincerely,

Walgreens Customer Service Team

This came from Target within 10 minutes of the Walgreens one:

To our valued guests,
Target’s email service provider, Epsilon, recently informed us that their data system was exposed to unauthorized entry. As a result, your email address may have been accessed by an unauthorized party. Epsilon took immediate action to close the vulnerability and notified law enforcement.While no personally identifiable information, such as names and credit card information, was involved, we felt it was important to let you know that your email may have been compromised. Target would never ask for personal or financial information through email.Consider these tips to help protect your personal information online:

  • Don’t provide sensitive information through email. Regular email is not a secure method to transmit personal information.
  • Don’t provide sensitive information outside of a secure website. Legitimate companies will not attempt to collect personal information outside a secure website. If you are concerned, contact the organization represented in the email. 
  • Don’t open emails from senders you don’t know.

We sincerely regret that this incident occurred. Target takes information protection very seriously and will continue to work to ensure that all appropriate measures are taken to protect personal information. Please contact Guest.Relations@target.com should you have any additional questions.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Gross
Vice President, Marketing and Guest Engagement

I put the VERY important suggestions we all need to keep in mind in BOLD for Walgreens and in RED for Target.  Did you receive these letters from anyone else today or recently?

**Update: Some readers have said they received the same notices from Best Buy, Disney Reservations and Brookstone.

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About Brett

I'm a 30-something mom to three, brand ambassador. social media maven, blogger extraordinaire, earth lover, butcher, baker, candlestick maker (or something along those lines) - love word games, crafting, cake decorating or shooting pictures.

Comments

  1. amy says:
    April 4, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    I didnt receive them from any that I know of…

    Reply
  2. helene says:
    April 4, 2011 at 10:34 pm

    brookestone and new york and company…

    Reply
  3. Manda N says:
    April 4, 2011 at 10:18 pm

    I got an email similar to that from Smith’s/Kroger stores…

    Reply
  4. nikki wilson says:
    April 4, 2011 at 10:11 pm

    Got one from Best Buy today.

    Reply

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