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JP Morgan Security Breach Affects More Than 83M Customers

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s data of more than 83 million household and small business accounts across the United States was compromised in a recent cyber attack, deemed as one of the biggest security breaches in history.

According to The Chicago Tribune, the bank revealed on Thursday that names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses were exposed to hackers but maintained that there was no evidence that sensitive information such as account numbers, passwords, user IDs, birth dates or Social Security numbers had been stolen.

“There is no evidence that account information for such affected customers -– account numbers, passwords, user IDs, dates of birth or Social Security numbers –- was compromised during this attack,” the company said.

So far, the bank said it has not detected any “unusual customer fraud” connected to the attack which exposed contact information for 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. However, Bloomberg reported that hackers obtained other internal data which identifies customers by category, whether they are clients of the private-bank, mortgage, auto or credit-card division.

The Tribune reported that the people affected by the breach are mostly account holders, including former account holders and others who entered their contact information at the bank’s online and mobile sites, a bank spokeswoman said.

Even though the data compromised is not sensitive, customers should be on heightened alert for fraud, warned Mark Rasch, a former federal cyber crimes prosecutor.

“All of this data is useful to hackers and identity thieves,” he said. “The kind of information that was stolen is not sensitive itself, but is frequently used to validate people’s identities.”

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