Adidas Says Latest Data Breach Only Affected "a few Million" Customers

According to fashion brand Adidas, “a few million” consumers might be affected by a recent data breach in their company.

It seems like there is a new data breach of massive scale every single day. In fact, just yesterday, more than 300-million American’s information got compromised.

Other high profile data breaches from this month include a carphone hack, ticket website breach, and massive Facebook privacy bug.

Unfortunately, 2018 has seen many hacks, data breaches, and privacy issues. That’s why the latest news that clothing brand Adidas compromised “a few million consumers” comes as no real surprise.

What happened in the breach and what information got leaked?

Time to Change Passwords…yet Again

While it is good practice to change your passwords every 3 – 6 months, it can get annoying.

Password generators prove useful, but still problematic since you can’t remember every one. Things like Last Pass provide security risks of their own.

However, you might need to change your passwords one more time, advises Adidas.

“We are alerting certain consumers who purchased on adidas.com/US about a potential data security incident. At this time this is a few million consumers…” an Adidas spokeswoman stated in an email.

The information breach included usernames, contact information, and encrypted passwords. The company “does not believe” the data breach included credit card information or anything on health and fitness.

Adidas did not name who committed the breach — only referring to them as “an unauthorized party”. The famous brand reported that it is conducting a forensic review to understand what happened.

image of a mouse cursor over the word Security for article Adidas Says Latest Hack Only Breached — It’s hard to know exactly how much the data breach revealed about the exposed users, but it is advised that you create a new profile before buying those new smooth kicks | Image by pixelcreatures | Pixabay

Adidas Knew of the Breach Since Tuesday

Bloomberg reported that Adidas knew of the breach since Tuesday. But most of the articles reporting the breach came from late Thursday night or Friday morning.

This calls into question how companies should approach data breaches like this.

Given that Adidas is no longer the only one to experience this, perhaps a precedent will emerge. Boeing Co., Under Armour, Hudson’s Bay Co., and even Delta Air Lines Inc. have all had high profile data breaches recently.

Companies need to do more to protect their customers’ private information.