Companies that lost my details in the last year

There's been an awful lot of companies losing my personal details recently, so I decided to write up a little recap of all the big multi-national companies that can't seem to keep a hold of my information.

Gawker Media, December 2010

Gawker was the first big breach, and it was a big one. Passwords were hashed, and not salted, so people that got hold of the passwords (and they were leaked publicly) wouldn't have too much trouble cracking them. Gawker screwed up, waited a few days before letting anyone know, and ended up being beaten to emailing affected users by several companies hoping to cash in on the publicity. At least they didn't have any bank or card details though.

Marks & Spencer, April 2011

Technically M&S didn't lose my details. They gave them to a company called Epsilon to manage ther email newsletters, and then Epsilon lost my email address. Big deal? Probably not, but this was the only case of someone losing any of my details without me actually giving them the details in the first place.

Sony, April 2011

Sony is the big one, they got breached completely. Attackers had full access behind the scenes of the Playstation Network. Although credit card details were encrypted, they were still lost, and could eventually be cracked by hackers with far too much (CPU) time on their hands. Luckily I've never given Sony my credit card details, a perk of being an Xbox fanboy I suppose, and Sony is giving everyone affected free stuff, so that's nice.

Codemasters, June 2011

The latest one, and the breach that caused me to write this article. Codemasters lost my name, address, email, encrypted passwords, phone numbers and order history. At least their payments were done through another company, so I don't have to worry about my bank details this time!