Paramount and Forever 21 Data Breach Exposes Thousands of Customer’s Personal Details

The significant media house Paramount Global and the renowned fashion supplier, Forever 21, have faced several data breach attacks exposing the personal information of thousands of people and set the stage for various scams.

A set of data breach attacks on both companies disclosed prominent information of their customers, including their names, addresses, emails, contacts, birthdates, and social security numbers. The Forever 21 data breach impacted approximately half a million people, on both employees and consumers; however, Paramount hasn’t yet stated a number or commented on the massive data breach. Although Hollywood Bigwig disclosed to the media in a letter that cyber attackers broke through Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and attacked several individuals for a month and reaped “social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, and information related to [the individual’s] relationship with Paramount.” The letter did not disclose the total number of victims and whether the data refers to website users, employees, customers, or others. On the other hand, Forever 21 disclosed that the hackers cracked PII and gathered the personal information of 539,000 consumers, including social security and bank account numbers. They also stated in the letter that “information regarding your Forever21 health plan” was also leaked, including their “enrollment and premium plan.” 

This stolen information can be used to follow up on more serious scams and host various frauds, such as phishing attacks aimed to gather more accurate and money making data. Security awareness advocate, Erich Kron stated, “this is a significant number of records that contain very sensitive information that have been potentially compromised. The data could easily be bundled and sold on the Dark Web and not used for months or even years. Information such as a Social Security number does not expire and can be useful for attackers for decades.” 

The systems or algorithms accessed by hackers in these incidents and what security loopholes allowed data breaches are unknown. Still, the breaches enhance the need for effective security compliance for businesses.

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