TripAdvisor CEO admits minor security breach in email to members

Members of the travel site TripAdvisor received an email from the company’s CEO today warning of a data breach that occurred over the weekend.

Steve Kaufer, who signed off as co-founder and CEO, says the leak has since been patched, but that an unauthorized third-party was able to obtain an undisclosed number of email addresses belonging to the site’s 20 million members. The breach isn’t quite near the level of the one a few months back at Gawker, but could cause some minor headaches for the affected users, such as increased levels of spam.

Kaufer offered little in the way of details, but said:

How will this affect you? In many cases, it won’t. Only a portion of all member email addresses were taken, and all member passwords remain secure. You may receive some unsolicited emails (spam) as a result of this incident.

The reason we are going directly to you with this news is that we think it’s the right thing to do. As a TripAdvisor member, I would want to know. Unfortunately, this sort of data theft is becoming more common across many industries, and we take it extremely seriously.

Did you get the email from TripAdvisor about the hack? Does this kind of thing worry you at all?