Hackers broke into the the crowdfunding website Kickstarter this week and stole your data! It isn’t as bad as it sounds, but I want to make sure that your safe.
Good News:
The good news is that Kicktarter does not keep any credit card information on file. Thanks for the fact that they use the 3rd party Amazon to process all payments and pay outs, the hackers were limited to usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and passwords.
Another plus is that there has been no evidence of malicious activity yet. Maybe the hackers are waiting to create a scheme around their newly stolen knowledge. My guess is that they will try and use emails and phone numbers to impersonate kickstarter in order to get bank information and/or other important information.
What To Do:
- Change your kickstarter password
- If you have any other sites with the same password, change all of those.
Many people use one password for everything. - Never give personal information over email or click on links you are not expecting from Kickstarter… or really anyone.
Concluding Thoughts
While it is sad to hear that Kickstarter was broken into and that it affects all of us who use Kickstarter on regular basis, but as long as you follow the instructions above everything should be good. We can continue to fund our favorite projects and start new campaigns to raise money for our dreams.
No website is ever hack proof. This is the world we live in and I feel Kickstarter is sincerely sorry for what happen. They have taken measures to keep this from happening in the future.
We’re incredibly sorry that this happened. We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways, and we will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come. We are working closely with law enforcement, and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this from happening again.
-Yancey Strickler
Kickstarter CEO
