Less than a month after Sony’s Playstation Network was compromised by hackers seeking personal information, a similar mishap has struck the Canadian arm of Honda / Acura. In a notice to its customers, the Japanese automaker revealed:
“The incident involved the unauthorized access of information as held in our records in 2009, specifically name, address, Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), and in a small number of cases, Honda Financial Services account numbers.”
It is believed that as many as 283,321 have been affected by the security breach. Honda Canada Executive VP Jerry Chenkin released a statement saying: “The information was limited and is not typically used for the purposes of identity theft or fraud. We would like to sincerely apologize to our Canadian customers for this incident. Honda and Acura are working diligently to protect our customers' personal information and improve our data security procedures on an ongoing basis.”
Honda / Acura notified The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and set up a hotline to ease customer concerns. Customers are being notified by mail and have been warned of possible third-party abuse of their details:
"We do not recommend that customers take any specific action at this time, other than being alert for marketing campaigns from third parties that reference your ownership of a Honda vehicle. Honda does not share its customer information with unauthorized third parties and does not contact customers asking for financial information."
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