Well, there is a little company named Epsilon and their business is spam, I mean email. Epsilon is the company that handles all of the marketing and customer emails from such companies as Best Buy and Chase Bank, along with thousands of others. Epsilon literally has millions of email addresses in their databases.

Unfortunately (you knew this was coming), Epsilon fell victim to hackers and an unknown number of names, email addresses, and possibly other information were stolen. Epsilon has been VERY vague with information, but by most estimates the numbers are huge and affect quite a few companies. On the surface this seems like not much to worry about, but when you give it a little thought you can see that the fallout from this can be huge. The hackers have access to real valid email address, the real name associated with the address, and a company the addressee is associated with.

Almost everyone in the security arena expects this is the "tip of the spear" for a huge increase in email phishing, and rightly so. Be VERY careful with any email you receive and whenever possible don't click links in emails - visit the site directly by typing the address directly into your browser. If you need a little refresher, or some examples, about suspicious emails check out our [url=http://www.davescomputertips.com/newsletters/2011/march.php#article1:22z37rr9]email article[/url:22z37rr9] in the March DCT newsletter.

Brian Krebs has an interesting article on the [url=http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/04/epsilon-breach-raises-specter-of-spear-phishing/:22z37rr9]email theft[/url:22z37rr9] with a list of known affected companies, which you should have a look at.