The news today has been full of the attack on TalkTalk and the potential security breach, which may yet cause havoc for a lot of people. We don’t entirely know yet, but the list of information that may have been stolen is enough to allow people to impersonate some users, or perhaps even reset passwords on other sites.
If you’re a Blinkbox user, you might well be concerned too. Originally owned by Tesco, the company was bought by TalkTalk recently, and the site is now branded “blinkbox from TalkTalk.”
So, is your data safe? We’ll, you won’t find that out by looking on the front page of the Blinkbox site, where there’s no notice. Nor is there anything on the support page, or the company’s Facebook page.
A look at their Twitter feed this morning showed a few @ replies where they’d clearly been reassuring people who, like me, were concerned. They’ve been telling people individually Blinkbox is unaffected, and sending them a link to a TalkTalk page about the attack.
@nigelwUK Hi Nigel, your details are completely safe with us. Please be assured blinkbox wasn’t affected by this Cyber-attack…
— blinkbox (@blinkbox) October 23, 2015
What they’ve absolutely failed to do is post a statement to all their followers, which strikes me as astonishingly daft. And the TalkTalk page that they’re sending people to – certainly at the time of writing – doesn’t mention Blinkbox at all. I’ve suggested they update that.
Meanwhile, it appears their plan is to tell people, one by one, if they ask, that they’re not affected. I can’t help thinking that’s not a very effective way of reassuring your customers.
A quick update (1300): I got an email from Blinkbox this morning, offering me a 50% discount code. It’s probably automated, based on how long it is since I last used their site. But really, it wouldn’t be too hard to send out something reassuring to their customers, would it?
