Costco Photo Center Security Breach

If you haven't heard yet, the Costco photo center website was hacked recently. Here's what Costco had to say about the security breach which may apply to you fellow Costco members who like to order photos from Costco:

As you may be aware, the company that hosts the online Costco Photo Center suffered a security compromise that caused our photo site to be taken offline for several weeks. Although we do not know the exact date of Costco's compromise, an unauthorized party appears to have accessed the host company's system from June 19, 2014 to July 15, 2015. At some point, the unauthorized party deployed malware within the host company's systems. Several retailers were impacted, but we do not know the extent of that impact. Our investigation indicates that some Costco members who typed information into their account may have had that information taken. You are receiving this notice because you have a Costco Photo Center online account, and there is a possibility that if you logged on during the affected time period, your email address and password were compromised. If you created a new account during the affected time period, your name and phone number also may have been compromised. We do not believe, however, that stored information or your photos were at risk. Costco.com itself was not impacted.

The site was taken offline on July 17 so that it could be rebuilt with additional security measures at a variety of levels. As a precaution, all stored credit card information was deleted. When we resume taking payments online, the site will have new payment technology with enhanced security features. We continue to work closely with our hosting company to implement security tools and tests to protect our members' personal data.

Now that the site is online again, we are requiring that all users reset their passwords the first time they access the site. In addition, we strongly recommend that you change your password on all other sites or services where you used the same password used for the photo site.

There is additional information about this situation accessible from the help section of the online Costco Photo Center: www.costcophotocenter.com/faqs. You may also call us at 866-329-0155.

We regret any inconvenience this situation may cause you.

Sincerely,

The Costco Photo Center Team

Hopefully, this hasn't affected you, but in any case let's hope that Costco has fixed the situation and your information is safe.