KFC security breach leaks user information

Barely a day goes by without some major breach or data leak. This Monday, fast food giant KFC e-mailed the 1.2 million members of its Colonel”s Club Loyalty program in the UK, asking them to immediately change their passwords after a hacker breached its website.

“Our monitoring systems have found a small number of Colonel’s Club accounts may have been compromised as a result of our website being targeted,” read the email. “Whilst it is unlikely you have been impacted, we advise that you change your password as a precaution.”

Although all customers in the program are advised to change passwords for their loyalty account and login credentials for all other accounts with the same email and password, KFC announced that only some 30 members were actually targeted. The information leaked does not contain financial information, as the company doesn”t store credit card details. However, users are advised to remain vigilant for phishing schemes.

“We take the online security of our fans very seriously, so we”ve advised all Colonel”s Club members to change their passwords as a precaution, despite only a small number of accounts being directly affected,” said Brad Scheiner, Head of IT at KFC UK & Ireland. “We don”t store credit card details as part of our Colonel”s Club rewards scheme, so no financial data was compromised.”

This is a problem we”ve been hearing about more and more. To be safer, users should pick a strong unique password by using a combination of numbers, upper and lowercase letters, avoid using words as they are easy to crack and implement two-factor authentication across all accounts that allow it. Never reveal your password and don”t allow your browser to memorize it.