With free shipping and a 365-day return policy, not to mention discounted prices on brand name shoes, Zappos.com is a shoe-loving collegiette’s™ dream website.
But Zappos.com is currently having a customer relations nightmare. This weekend, the giant online shoe store announced that they were hacked, putting at risk the account information of 24 million customers, including customer names, email and billing addresses, phone numbers, encrypted passwords, and the last four digits of their credit cards.
The online store released a statement on Sunday night announcing that it was the target of a cyber attack that gained access to its internal network, including the accounts of 24 million customers.
“We were recently the victim of a cyber attack by a criminal who gained access to parts of our internal network and systems through one of our servers in Kentucky,” Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote to employees in an email posted to the site. “We are cooperating with law enforcement to undergo an exhaustive investigation.”
Though the company says that no complete credit card numbers were revealed in the breach, Zappos says it’s taken the precaution of resetting the passwords of all its customers. It’s already deleted their current passwords and is sending instructions on how to create new ones.
Zappos is warning customers to take extra precaution by changing similiar passwords on other sites in case the hackers are able to decrypt the scrambled passwords they’ve stolen and to watch out for phishing emails that will use their stolen email addresses to spoof official Zappos emails and ask for account credentials or financial details.
“We’ve spent over 12 years building our reputation, brand, and trust with our customers. It’s painful to see us take so many steps back due to a single incident,” Hsieh said. “I suppose the one saving grace is that the database that stores our customers’ critical credit card and other payment data was not affected or accessed.” Beyond that, the company declined comment. It would not say whether 24 million customers’ files had been breached, only that it’s reset 24 million passwords.
If you’re a Zappos customer, you can change your password here.