Massive E-Mail Hack. Phishing Season To Begin Early This Year.
On April Fools' Day, Epsilon (one of the largest on-line marketing firms) announced through 
a terse press release that their "...clients' customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry..." but that the information obtained had been limited to names and e-mail addresses. Unfortunately, it was not an April Fools joke.
Some of Epsilon's customers include Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Brookstone, Kroger, College Board, Walgreens, TiVo, Capital One, HSN Inc., Visa, Kraft, LL Bean, Best Buy and Verizon.
So, what you need to look out for and alert your clients about is the possibility of increased "phishing" attacks. We have all had e-mails purporting to be from some bank or other entity and requesting us to go to some website (configured to look like the real entity's website) and enter information and possibly pick up spyware or viruses. Since most phishing attacks are just random broadcasts, the fact that these intruders have specific names, e-mail addresses and links to specific entities with whom the targets do business leads to a more pointed attack, which is referred to as "spear phishing". Because of the more targeted approach, the success rate is likely to be higher.
How do you protect yourself? PC World has some good advice. As the PC World articles states, the best way to avoid this is never to go to a website from an unknown e-mail link and don't provide any sensitive information such as password, PIN, etc. Common sense instructions but please tell your grandma about this.
