Coral Murphy USA TODAY Oct. 15, 2020
A cybersecurity attack on Barnes & Noble exposed customers personal information, including transaction history and email addresses.
The company sent an email notifying customers of the data breach, which they were aware of since Oct. 10. The bookstore chain clarified customers’ financial information, such as payment card information, was not among the exposed data, said the report.
“While we do not know if any personal information was exposed as a result of the attack, we do retain in the impacted systems your billing and shipping addresses, your email address and your telephone number if you have supplied these,” reads the email from Barnes & Noble.
This comes after Barnes & Noble experienced a Nook e-reader book access outage for days. “We are continuing to experience a systems failure that is interrupting NOOK content,” reads a service alert in the Barnes & Noble Support page.
The bookstore chain alerted customers that they may receive unsolicited emails due to the cyberattack.
“Barnes & Noble customers that may have been impacted should be on high alert,” said Darren Guccione, CEO and co-founder of password management provider Keeper Security. “In addition to keeping a close eye on emails, Barnes & Noble customers whose information may have been compromised in this attack should ramp up their personal cybersecurity protections.”