It appears that Yahoo is not the only company in trouble for exposing private information of its clients as Acer is currently under fire for the same charges concerning the credit card information of buyers on its online store. The tech company is facing a $115 thousand fine for leaving the personal data of 35,000 customers exposed to hackers.
Acer Hacking Scare
Acer suffered a hacking scare a year ago and they had to settle with the New York Attorney General's office and at the same time, provide assurance that they are going to beef up the digital security in their online store.
Acer was found guilty of making major security errors that allowed the hackers to infiltrate its system and gain access to the credit card information of its online buyers. Acer left its security platform in debugging mode from July 2015 until April 2016. This misconfiguration allows unauthorized users to browse through the website directory where the data were stored as unencrypted plain text log files.
This mistake is a big one especially for a computer manufacturer as big as Acer. The number of affected buyers may not be greater than the 500 million user data leaked by Yahoo but it is still a large number.
Hacking Victims
Based on the findings of the investigation, at least one group of hackers accessed the company's website between November 2015 and April 2016 and stole the information of the buyers including their name, address, usernames, passwords, and their credit card verification number. Luckily, the social security number of the victims who lived in Puerto Rico, U.S. and Canada were not included in the information stolen by the hackers.
Acer's security breach was discovered in the course of investigation since the purchase from the store was the last valid transaction for the credit cards. Given the number of security risks online, companies that operate online stores like Acer should ensure the safety of its buyer's personal information.
