Within days of eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) disclosing a major data breach that has millions scrambling to change their passwords in the hopes it’s not too late to stay beyond the breach, three U.S. attorneys general in Illinois, Florida, and Connecticut have teamed up to probe the e-commerce website.
eBay plans to email affected customers
While eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) has not made it clear how many people were affected by the probe which compromised passwords and non-financial data, the company has said that it plans to email customers with details soon. eBay has also said that after “extensive tests” that it is confident that no financial data was compromised.
Connecticut AG George Jepsen has said that he is “looking into the circumstances surrounding this breach,” and Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection Commissioner William Rubenstein urged all 660,000 customers in the state to “immediately assign different passwords … to protect them from being accessed through this breach.”
In Florida, AG Pam Bondi said with no short measure of hyperbole given the limited details of the breach that it “could be of historic proportions,” and promised to “do everything in our power to protect consumers’ personal information.”
Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, has also joined the investigation according to Reuters.
Eric Schneiderman’s statement on eBay’s data breach
New York AG Eric Schneiderman, who seems to be in the national news fairly often given his suits against Airbnb and investigation into high frequency trading issued a statement that said the breach “is deeply concerning,” while asking eBay to provide free credit monitoring.
New Yorkers and eBay customers around the country trust that retailers will protect their personal information when they shop online,” he said. “Our office has asked and fully expects eBay to provide free credit monitoring services to customers impacted by this breach.”
Speculation suggests that this is the largest breach of customer data since Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) was hit in a considerably more dangerous breach late last year.
Heartbleed Bug root of eBay hack?
The eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) hack comes in the wake of the Heartbleed Bug, which, discovered in OpenSSL in April, left encrypted data open to scammers for more than a year.
For more, check out some of the biggest hacks of 2013 in the slideshow above.
Attorneys General in three U.S. states along with European officials are investigating a massive data breach at eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) which may have compromised more than 100 million users’ passwords.
“The magnitude of the reported eBay data breach could be of historic proportions, and my office is part of a group of other attorneys general in the country investigating the matter,” said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi in a statement Thursday.
FTC vows to conduct a probe
The Federal Trade Commission and Attorneys General in Illinois and Connecticut have also vowed to conduct a probe into the incident.
“My office will be looking into the circumstances surrounding this breach as well as the steps eBay is taking to prevent any future incidents,” said Connecticut Attorney General Jepsen in a statement Thursday. “However, the most important step for consumers to take right now is to change their password and to choose a strong, unique password that is not easily guessed.”
Officials in the UK have promised to investigate as well, the Guardian reports.
“We’re certainly looking at the situation,” Christopher Graham, the UK’s Information Commissioner, told the BBC. “We have to work with colleagues in Luxembourg where eBay is based for European purposes. We were in touch with the Luxembourg data protection authority yesterday.”
eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) notified users of the data breach Wednesday. The company has urged all users to change their passwords, but it said no financial data was compromised in a cyberattack that took the company weeks to detect.
