Superdrug has advised thousands of customers to change passwords after hackers have claimed to have stolen the personal details of thousands of people.
The high street pharmacy announced that it was contacted by a group on Monday night who had obtained the names, addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers of 20,000 customers.
“The hacker shared a number of details with us to try to prove he had customer information – we were then able to verify they were Superdrug customers from their email and log-in,” said a spokesperson from the group.
“We believe the hacker obtained customers’ email addresses and passwords from other websites and then used those credentials to access accounts on our website,”
“We take our responsibility to protect your personal information very seriously and that is why we have let our customers know as soon as we could.”
“We have contacted the police and Action Fraud [the UK’s national fraud and cyber-crime arm] and will be offering them all the information they need for their investigation. We appreciate this is very frustrating and we are doing everything we can on this,” the group added.
Superdrug has added it had contacted the police and Action Fraud and is investigating the data breach.
Last month Dixons Carphone (LON: DC) admitted that the personal data of almost 10 million customers may have been accessed illegally last year. This was almost 10 times more than the group originally thought.
Superdrug, who has partnered up with reality show Love Island, revealed a 16 percent increase in pre-tax profits to £93 million. The group also revealed a 2.3 percent jump in revenues to £1.2 billion last year.