Play.com Announce Security Breach

All Play.com customers received an urgent email notification on 21st March 2011. The email notified all customers of a potential security breach into Plays email database and warned all customers to be vigilant of email spamming and Phishing Scams.

The urgent message was sent after certain Play.com customers reported spam emails to accounts which were only used for Play.com. Thanks to these fast acting customers, Play.com were able to get a mass email out to all customers to combat this security breach.

The security breach only effected Play.com's newsletter email database

In the urgent emails sent out by the customer service team, it was made clear that the security breach had only effected their newsletter database. This meant that all customers payment details and address details were still secure. After the breach had been carefully explained, the customer service team then went on to warn all customers to be vigilant of future Play.com Phishing Scams and to never give out personal details via email. Please read our guide on Identifying and Avoiding Email Scams for more detailed help.

A few questions were brought up over the recent Play.com security breach, so we would like to take this opportunity to answer them as best we can:

Q: What is a “Newsletter Database” and how does this mean our personal details are still safe?

A: Play.com are a very large and professional company. They will never keep all customer details together due to a risk like the recent security breach. Customer bank details and address details are kept separately to newsletter details to make it impossible for such a breach to give-up such valuable data. A Newsletter database is one large list of email addresses. It is used to send customers emails (newsletters) on Play.com’s latest products and only contains customer emails. Nothing else.

Q: Hang on…the email we received from Play.com didn’t address us by our first and last names. It only addressed us as “Dear Customer”. Does this mean the very email I read on the security breach was a spam email?!

A: No this email was not a spam or Phishing Scam email but this was a very good question. The reason why Play.com never addressed individual customers was because it would have taken far too long to do so. The security breach had already been made and Play.com needed to contact all customers immediately. However, one major sign that indicated that the email from Play.com was NOT an email scam, was the fact that the email did not ask for personal details. Always check how the email addresses you and what it’s asking before making a decision. Scroll further up this page for a link on our guide on how to spot spam and Phishing Scam emails.

Q: Is it still safe to shop with Play.com?

A: Yes it’s perfectly safe. Play.com have very secure methods in not only keeping customer details safe, but keeping customers up-to-date with any security events that occur. Play.com did incredibly well to contact each customer as they did and warn them about potential Play.com Phishing Scams. Customer payment and address details are perfectly safe so there is no need to worry and no need to stop shopping at Play.com.