Over 500K Customers Exposed in Forever 21 Breach
Table of Contents
- By Steven
- Published: Sep 05, 2023
- Last Updated: Sep 05, 2023
Forever 21 is a large fashion company that spans across many different countries. Forever 21 has over 540 retail outlets worldwide and approximately 43,000 employees. The organization gathers and uses information from millions of customers, and some of them were exposed in a recent data breach.
How Did the Attack Occur?
While we only have the Maine Attorney General's Office notice to go off from, Forever 21 was attacked by an outside element that gathered information for approximately 539,207 people. All this information could be misused. We know the notice was filed between August 29 and August 30, 2023, but that isn't necessarily when the breach occurred.
What Information Was Viewed or Stolen?
In the notice sent out about the data breach, it was made clear that bank account information, full names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers were released about many of the people involved in this data breach. If your data was included in the breach, some or all of that information may have been released. It's impossible to say how much data was released overall, but you should assume that all of that was made available, putting victims at risk for identity theft.
How Did Forever 21 Admit to the Breach?
Forever 21 released a notice to the Maine Attorney General's office explaining details about he data breach. In the notice given to the office, there was information about more than 500,000 people being involved as well as the information they were most likely to lose from the breach. This information makes it clear that many people are at risk of losing significant data and they should be taking steps to protect themselves.
What Will Become of the Stolen Information?
While it's impossible to say how the data will be used after being stolen, there are many potential ways the information could be misused. The most likely scenario is that the data will be used to launch identity theft attacks on affected individuals. The data could also be used in phishing attacks to make them more convincing and result in more stolen information. Some attackers resell gathered information as a way to earn money off it. Any of those outcomes are possible for the heap of information taken from Forever 21.
What Should Affected Parties Do in the Aftermath of the Breach?
Anyone involved in this breach should take immediate action to protect their information in any way they can. The best thing to do is invest in credit monitoring services to watch for odd credit changes. These services give immediate alerts when credit changes occur, and they will help you take action to fix any identity theft-related issues. Along with immediately investing in a credit monitoring service, you should also monitor your financial accounts closely. Be careful to avoid giving away personal information to anyone who asks, and only provide data to those you trust completely. In most cases, you can avoid giving personal or financial data via email, SMS, and over the phone. If you take these steps, you should be able to avoid the most common data-related issues.
